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DEDICATED 

TO 

MY DEAR LITTLE COUSIN 

^ane Dollwas* 


CONTENTS. 

PAOE 

I. Above the Clouds 1 

II. Captain Jack 13 

III. Winding-up Time 21 

IV. Bees and other Fellow-Creatures 39 

V. The Parrot in his Shawl 56 

VI. The Town with Nobody in it 75 

VII. Halp-a-Crown 86 

VIII. A Story 100 

IX. After THE Party 114 

X. Mopsa Learns her Letters 125 

XI. Good-morning, Sister 137 

XII. They run away from old Mother Fate 148 

XIII. Melon Seeds 163 

XIV. Reeds and Rushes 175 

XV. The Queen’s Wand 186 

XVI. Failure 205 



MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


CHAPTER 1. 

ABOVE THE CLOUDS. 

“ And can this be my own world ? 

’Tis all gold and snow, 

Save where scarlet waves are hurled 
Down yon gulf below.” 

“ ’Tis thy world, ’tis my world. 

City, mead, and shore. 

For he that hath his own world 
Hath many worlds more.” 

A BOY, whom I knew very well, was once 
going through a meadow, which was full of 
buttercups. The nurse and his baby sister 
were with him ; and when they got to an old 
hawthorn, which grew in the hedge and was 
covered with blossom, they all sat down in its 
shade, and the nurse took out three slices of 
plum-cake, gave one to each of the children, 
and kept one for herself. 


1 


2 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


While the boy was eating, he observed that 
this hedge was very high and thick, and that 
there was a great hollow in the trunk of the 
old thorn-tree, and he heard a twittering, as 
if there was a nest somewhere inside ; so he 
thrust his head in, twisted himself round, and 
looked up. 

It was a very great thorn-tree, and the 
hollow was so large that two or three boys 
could have stood upright in it ; and when he 
got used to the dim light in that brown, still 
place, he saw that a good way above his head 
there was a nest, — rather a curious one, too, 
for it was as large as a pair of blackbirds would 
have built, — and yet it was made of fine white 
wool and delicate bits of moss ; in short, it was 
like a goldfinch’s nest magnified three times. 

Just then he thought he heard some little 
voices cry, “ Jack ! Jack ! ” His baby sister 
was asleep, and the nurse was reading a story- 
book, so it could not have been either of them 
who called. “I must get in here,” said the 
boy. “ I wish this hole was larger.” So he 
began to wriggle and twist himself through. 


ABOVE THE CLOUDS. 


3 


and just as he pulled in his last foot, he looked 
up, and three heads which had been peeping 
over the edge of the nest suddenly popped 
down again. 

“ Those heads had no beaks, I am sure,” said 
J ack, and he stood on tiptoe and poked in one 
of his fingers. “ And the things have no 
feathers,” he continued ; so, the hollow being 
rather rugged, he managed to climb up and 
look in. 

His eyes were not used yet to the dim light ; 
but he was sure those things were not birds, — 
no. He poked them, and they took no notice ; 
but when he snatched one of them out of the 
nest, it gave a loud squeak, and said, “ O don’t. 
Jack ! ” as plainly as possible, upon which he 
was so frightened that he lost his footing, 
dropped the thing, and slipped down himself. 
Luckily, he was not hurt, nor the thing either ; 
he could see it quite plainly now : it was creep- 
ing about like rather an old baby, and had on 
a little frock and pinafore. 

“It’s a fairy! ” exclaimed Jack to himself. 
“ How curious ! and this must be a fairy’s nest. 


4 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


Oh, how angry the old mother will be if this 
little thing creeps away and gets out of the 
hole ! ” So he looked down. “ Oh, the hole is 
on the other side,” he said; and he turned 
round, but the hole was not on the other side ; 
it was not on any side ; it must have closed up 
all on a sudden, while he was looking into the 
nest, for, look whichever way he would, there 
was no hole at all, excepting a very little one 
high up over the nest, which let in a very small 
sunbeam. 

Jack was very much astonished, but he went 
on eating his cake, and was so delighted to see 
the young fairy climb up the side of the hollow 
and scramble again into her nest, that he 
laughed heartily ; upon which all the nestlings 
popped up their heads, and, showing their pretty 
white teeth, pointed at the slice of cake. 

“ Well,” said Jack, “ I may have to stay in- 
side here for a long time, and I have nothing 
to eat but this cake ; however, your mouths 
are very small, so you shall have a piece ; ” and 
he broke off a small piece, and put it into the 
nest, climbing up to see them eat it. 


ABOVE THE CLOUDS. 


5 


These young fairies were a long time dividing 
and munching the cake, and before they had 
finished, it began to be rather dark, for a black 
cloud came over and covered the little sunbeam. 
At the same time the wind rose, and rocked the 
boughs, and made the old tree creak and trem- 
ble. Then there was thunder and rain, and the 
little fairies were so frightened that they got 
out of the nest and crept into Jack’s pockets. 
One got into each waistcoat pocket, and the 
other two were very comfortable, for he took 
out his handkerchief and made room for them 
in the pocket of his jacket. 

It got darker and darker, till at last Jack 
could only just see the hole, and it seemed 
to be a very long way off. Every time he 
looked at it, it was farther off, and at last 
he saw a thin crescent moon shining through 
it. 

“ I am sure it cannot be night yet,” he said ; 
and he took out one of the fattest of the young 
fairies, and held it up towards the hole. 

‘‘ Look at that,” said he ; “ what is to be done 
now 2 the hole is so far off that it’s night up 


6 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


there, and down here I haven’t done eating my 
lunch.” 

“Well,” answered the young fairy, “then 
why don’t you whistle ? ” 

Jack was surprised to hear her speak in this 
sensible manner, and in the light of the moon 
he looked at her very attentively. 

“ When first I saw you in the nest,” said he, 
“ you had a pinafore on, and now you have a 
smart little apron, with lace round it.” 

“That is because I am much older now,” 
said the fairy ; “ we never take such a long time 
to grow up as you do.” 

“ But your pinafore ? ” said Jack. 

“ Turned into an apron, of course,” replied 
the fairy, “ just as your velvet jacket will turn 
into a tail-coat when you are old enough.” 

“ It won’t,” said Jack. 

“ Yes it will,” answered the fairy, with an air 
of superior wisdom. “ Don’t argue with me ; I 
am older now than you are, — nearly grown up, 
in fact. Put me into your pocket again, and 
whistle as loudly as you can.” 

Jack laughed, put her in, and pulled out an- 


ABOVE THE CLOUDS. 7 

other. “Worse and worse,” he said; “why, 
this was a boy fairy, and now he has a mus- 
tache and a sword, and looks as fierce as pos- 
sible ! ” 

“I think I heard my sister tell you to 
whistle ? ” said this fairy, very sternly. 

“Yes, she did,” said Jack. “Well, I sup- 
pose I had better do it.” So he whistled very 
loudly indeed. 

“ Why did you leave off so soon ? ” said an- 
other of them, peeping out. 

“ Why, if you wish to know,” answered Jack, 
“ it was because I thought something took hold 
of my legs.” 

“ Eidiculous child ! ” cried the last of the 
four, “ how do you think you are ever to get 
out, if she doesn’t take hold of your legs ? ” 

Jack thought he would rather have done a 
long-division sum than have been obliged to 
whistle ; but he could not help doing it when 
they told him, and he felt something take hold 
of his legs again, and then give him a jerk, 
which hoisted him on to its back, where he sat 
astride, and wondered whether the thing was a 


8 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


pony ; but it was not, for he presently observed 
that it had a very slender neck, and then that 
it was covered with feathers. It was a large 
bird, and he presently found that they were 
rising towards the hole, which had become so 
very far off, and in a few minutes she dashed 
through the hole, with Jack on her back and 
all the fairies in his pockets. 

It was so dark that he could see nothing, 
and he twined his arms round the bird’s neck, 
to hold on, upon which this agreeable fowl told 
him not to be afraid, and said she hoped he was 
comfortable. 

“ I should be more comfortable,” replied 
Jack, “ if I knew how I could get home again. 
I don’t wish to go home just yet, for I want to 
see where we are flying to, but papa and mam- 
ma will be frightened if I never do.” 

“ Oh no,” replied the albatross (for she was 
an albatross), “ you need not be at all afraid 
about that. When boys go to Fairyland, their 
parents never are uneasy about them.” 

“ Keally ? ” exclaimed Jack. 

‘‘ Quite true,” replied the albatross. 


ABOVE THE CLOUDS. 9 

“ And so we are going to Fairyland ? ” ex- 
claimed Jack ; “ how delightful ! ” 

“ Yes,” said the albatross ; the back Avay, 
mind ; we are only going the back way. You 
could go in two minutes by the usual route ; 
but these young fairies want to go before they 
are summoned, and therefore you and I are 
taking them.” And she continued to fly on in 
the dark sky for a very long time. 

“ They seem to be all fast asleep,” said 
Jack. 

“ Perhaps they will sleep till we coipe to the 
wonderful river,” replied the albatross ; and 
just then she flew with a great bump against 
something that met her in the air. 

“ What craft is this that hangs out no light ? ” 
said a gruff voice. 

“ I might ask the same question of you,” an- 
swered the albatross, sullenly. 

“ I’m only a poor Will-o’-the-wisp,” replied 
the voice, “ and you know very well that I have 
but a lantern to show.” Thereupon a lantern 
became visible, and Jack saw by the light of it 
a man, who looked old and tired, and he was so 


10 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


transparent that you could see through him, 
lantern and all. 

“ I hope I have not hurt you, William,” said 
the albatross; “I will light up immediately. 
Good-night.” 

“ Good-night,” answered the Will-o’-the-wisp. 
“ I am going down as fast as I can ; the storm 
blew me up, and I am never easy excepting in 
my native swamps.” 

Jack might have taken more notice of Will, 
if the albatross had not begun to light up. 
She did it in this way. First, one of her eyes 
began to gleam with a beautiful green light, 
which cast its rays far and near, and then, 
when it was as bright as a lamp, the other eye 
began to shine, and the light of that eye was 
red. In short, she was lighted up just like a 
vessel at sea. 

Jack was so happy that he hardly knew 
which to look at first, there really were so 
many remarkable things. 

They snore,” said the albatross, “ they are 
very fast asleep, and before they wake I should 
like to talk to you a little.” 


ABOVE THE CLOUDS. 11 

She meant that the fairies snored, and so 
they did, in Jack’s pockets. 

“ My name,” continued the albatross, “ is 
Jenny. Do you think you shall remember 
that ? because, when you are in Fairyland and 
want some one to take you home again, and 
call ‘Jenny,’ I shall be able to come to you; 
and I shall come with pleasure, for I like boys 
better than fairies.” 

“ Thank you,” said Jack. “ Oh yes, I shall 
remember your name, it is such a very easy 
one.” 

“ If it is in the night that you want me, just 
look up,” continued the albatross, “and you 
will see a green and a red spark moving in the 
air ; you will then call Jenny, and I will come ; 
but remember that I cannot come unless you 
do call me.” 

“ Yery well,” said Jack ; but he was not at- 
tending, because there was so much to be seen. 

In the first place, all the stars excepting a 
few large ones were gone, and they looked 
frightened ; and as it got lighter, one after the 
other seemed to give a little start in the blue 


12 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


sky and go out. And then Jack looked down 
and saw, as he thought, a great country, cov- 
ered with very jagged snow mountains with 
astonishingly sharp peaks. Here and there he 
saw a very deep lake, — at least he thought it 
was a lake ; but while he was admiring the 
mountains, there came an enormous crack be- 
tween two of the largest, and he saw the sun 
come rolling up among them, and it seemed to 
be almost smothered. 

“ Why, those are clouds ! ” exclaimed Jack ; 
“and O how rosy they have all turned! I 
thought they were mountains.” 

“ Yes, they are clouds,” said the albatross ; 
and then they turned gold color ; and next 
they began to plunge and tumble, and every 
one of the peaks put on a glittering crown ; and 
next they broke themselves to pieces, and began 
to drift away. In fact, Jack had been out all 
night, and now it was morning. 


CHAPTER 11. 


CAPTAIN JACK. 

“ It has been our lot to sail with many captains, not 
one of whom is fit to be a patch on your back .” — Letter 
of the Shipps Company of H. M. S. S. Royalist to Cap- 
tain W. T. Bate. 

All this time the albatross kept dropping 
down and down like a stone, till Jack was quite 
out of breath, and they fell or flew, whichever 
you like to call it, straight through one of the 
great chasms which he had thought were lakes, 
and he looked down, as he sat on the bird’s 
back, to see what the world is like when you 
hang a good way above it at sunrise. 

It was a very beautiful sight ; the sheep and 
lambs were still fast asleep on the green hills, 
and the sea-birds were asleep in long rows upon 
the ledges of the cliffs, with their heads under 
their wings. 

“Are those young fairies awake yet?” 
asked the albatross. 


13 


14 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


“ As sound asleep as ever,” answered Jack ; 
“ but, Albatross, is not that the sea which lies 
under us ? You are a sea-bird, I know, but I 
am not a sea boy, and I cannot live in the 
water.” 

“ Yes, that is the sea,” answered the albatross. 
“ Don’t you observe that it is covered with 
ships ? ” 

“I see boats and vessels,” answered Jack, 
and all their sails are set, but they cannot sail, 
because there is no wind.” 

“ The wind never does blow in this great 
bay,” said the bird ; “ and those ships would 
all lie there becalmed till they dropped to 
pieces if one of them was not wanted now and 
then to go up the wonderful river.” 

“But how did they come there?” asked 
Jack. 

“ Some of them had captains who ill-used 
their cabin-boys, some were pirate ships, and 
others were going out on evil errands. The 
consequence was, that when they chanced to 
sail within this great bay they got becalmed ; 
the fairies came and picked all the sailors out 


CAPTAIN JACK. 


15 


and threw them into the water ; they then took 
away the flags and pennons to make their best 
coats of, threw the ship-biscuits and other pro- 
visions to the Ashes, and set all the sails. Many 
ships which are supposed by men to have foun- 
dered lie becalmed in this quiet sea. Look at 
those five grand ones with high prows ; they 
are moored close together ; they were part of 
the Spanish Armada : and those open boats 
with blue sails belonged to the Komans ; they 
sailed with Caesar when he invaded Britain.” 

By this time the albatross was hovering 
about among the vessels, making choice of one 
to take Jack and the fairies up the wonderful 
river. 

“ It must not be a large one,” she said, “ for 
the river in some places is very shallow.” 

Jack would have liked very much to have a 
fine three-master, all to himself ; but then he 
considered that he did not know anything 
about sails and rigging ; he thought it would 
be just as well to be contented with whatever 
the albatross might choose, so he let her set 
him down in a beautiful little open boat, with 


16 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


a great carved figure-head to it. There he 
seated himself in great state, and the albatross 
perched herself on the next bench, and faced 
him. 

“ You remember my name ? ” asked the 
albatross. 

“ Oh yes,” said Jack ; but he was not attend- 
ing, — he was thinking what a fine thing it was 
to have such a curious boat all to himself. 

“ That’s well,” answered the bird ; ‘‘ then, 
in the next place, are those fairies awake 
yet?” 

“ E'o, they are not,” said Jack ; and he took 
them out of his pockets, and laid them down 
in a row before the albatross. 

“ They are certainly asleep,” said the bird. 
“ Put them away again, and take great care of 
them. Mind you don’t lose any of them, for 
I really don’t know what will happen if you 
do. Now I have one thing more to say to 
you, and that is, are you hungry ? ” 

‘‘Eat her,” said Jack. 

“Then,” replied the albatross, “as soon as 
you feel very hungry, lie down in the bottom 


CAPTAIN JACK. 


17 


of the boat and go to sleep. You will dream 
that you see before you a roasted fowl, some 
new potatoes, and an apple-pie. Mind you 
don’t eat too much in your dream, or you will 
be sorry for it when you wake. That is all. 
Good-by ! I must go.” 

Jack put his arms round the neck of the 
bird, and hugged her ; then she spread her 
magnificent wings and sailed slowly away. 
At first he felt very lonely, but in a few 
minutes ho forgot that, because the little boat 
began to swim so fast. 

She was not sailing, for she had no sail, and 
he was not rowing, for he had no oars ; so I 
am obliged to call her motion swimming, 
because I don’t know of a better word. In less 
than a quarter of an hour they passed close 
under the bows of a splendid three-decker, a 
seventy-gun ship. The gannets who live in 
those parts had taken possession of her, and 
she was so covered with nests that you could 
not have walked one step on her deck without 
treading on them. The father birds were aloft 
in the rigging, or swimming in the warm, 


18 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


green sea, and they made such a clamor when 
they saw Jack that they nearly woke the 
fairies, — nearly, but not quite, for the little 
things turned round in Jack’s pockets, and 
sneezed, and began to snore again. 

Then the boat swam past a fine brig. Some 
sea fairies had just flung her cargo overboard, 
and were playing at leap-frog on deck. These 
were not at all like Jack’s own fairies ; they 
were about the same height and size as himself, 
and they had brown faces, and red flannel 
shirts and red caps on. A large fleet of the 
pearly nautilus was collected close under the 
vessel’s lee. The little creatures were feasting 
on what the sea fairies had thrown overboard, 
and Jack’s boat, in its eagerness to get on, 
went plunging through them so roughly that 
several were capsized. Upon this the brown 
sea fairies looked over, and called out angrily, 
“ Boat ahoy ! ” and the boat stopped. 

‘‘ Tell that boat of yours to mind what she 
is about,” said the fairy sea-captain to Jack. 

Jack touched his hat, and said, “Yes, sir,” 
and then called out to his boat, “ You ought 



The Brown Sea Fairies looked over, and called out 
ANGRILY, “Boat ahoy!” 






CAPTAIN JACK. 


19 


to bo ashamed of yourself, running down these 
little live fishing-vessels so carelessly. Go at 
a more gentle pace.” 

So it swam more slowly ; and Jack, being 
by this time hungry, curled himself up in the 
bottom of the boat, and fell asleep. 

He dreamt directly about a fowl, and some 
potatoes, and he ate a wing, and then he ate a 
merry-thought, and then somebody said to him 
that he had better not eat any more, but he 
did, — he ate another wing ; and presently an 
apple-pie came, and he ate some of that, and 
then he ate some more, and then he immedi- 
ately woke. 

“How that bird told me not to eat too 
much,” said Jack, “ and yet I have done it. I 
never felt so full in my life ; ” and for more 
than half an hour he scarcely noticed any- 
thing. 

At last he lifed up his head, and saw straight 
before him two great brown cliffs, and between 
them flowed in the wonderful river. Other 
rivers flow out, but this river flowed in. and took 
with it far into the land dolphins, sword-fish. 


20 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


mullet, sun-fish, and many other strange crea- 
tures ; and that is one reason why it was called 
the magic river, or the wonderful river. 

At first it was rather wide, and Jack was 
alarmed to see what multitudes of soldiers stood 
on either side to guard the banks, and prevent 
any person from landing. 

He wondered how he should get the fairies 
on shore. However, in about an hour the river 
became much narrower, and then Jack saw that 
the guards were not real soldiers, but rose- 
colored flamingoes. There they stood, in long 
regiments, among the reeds, and never stirred. 
They are the only foot-soldiers the fairies have 
in their pay ; they are very fierce, and never 
allow anything but a fairy ship to come up the 
river. 

They guarded the banks for miles and miles, 
many thousands of them, standing a little way 
into the water among the flags and rushes ; but 
at last there were no more reeds and no soldier 
guards, for the stream became narrower, and 
flowed between such steep rocks that no one 
could possibly have climbed them. 


CHAPTER III 


WINDING-UP TIME. 

Wake, baillie, wake ! the crafts are out; 

Wake I ” said the knight, “ be quick I 
For high street, by street, over the town 
They fight with poker and stick.” 

Said the squire, “ A fight so fell was ne’er 
In all thy bailliewick.” 

What said the old clock in the tower ? 

“ Tick, tick, tick ! ” 

“ Wake, daughter, wake ! the hour draws on ; 

Wake ! ” quoth the dame, “ be quick I 
The meats are set, the guests are coming, 

The fiddler waxing his stick.” 

She said, “ The bridegroom waiting and waiting 
To see thy face is sick.” 

What said the new clock in her bower ? 

“ Tick, tick, tick ! ” 

Jack looked at these hot, brown rocks, first 
on the left bank and then on the right, till he 
was quite tired ; but at last the shore on the 

right bank became flat, and he saw a beautiful 

21 


22 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


little bay, where the water was still, and where 
grass grew down to the brink. 

He was so much pleased at this change, that 
he cried out hastily, “ Oh how I wish my boat 
would swim into that bay and let me land ! ” 
He had no sooner spoken than the boat altered 
her course, as if somebody had been steering 
her, and began to make for the bay as fast as 
she could go. 

“ How odd ! ” thought Jack. “ I wonder 
whether I ought to have spoken ; for the boat 
certainly did not intend to come into this bay. 
However, I think I will let her alone now, for 
I certainly do wish very much to land here.” 

As they drew towards the strand, the water 
got so shallow that you could see crabs and lob- 
sters walking about at the bottom. At last 
the boat’s keel grated on the pebbles ; and 
just as Jack began to think of jumping on shore, 
he saw two little old women approaching, and 
gently driving a white horse before them. 

The horse had panniers, one on each side ; 
and when his feet were in the water he stood 
still ; and J ack said to one of the old women. 


WINDING-UP TIME. 23 

— “Will you be so kind as to tell me whether 
this is Fairyland ? ” 

“ What does he say ? ” asked one old woman 
of the other. 

“ I asked if this was Fairyland ? ” repeated 
Jack, for he thought the first old woman 
might have been deaf. She was very hand- 
somely dressed in a red satin gown, and did 
not look in the least like a washerwoman, 
though it afterwards appeared that she was 
one. 

“ He says, ‘ Is this Fairyland ? ’ ” she replied ; 
and the other, who had a blue satin cloak, an- 
swered, “ Oh, does he ? ” and then they began 
to empty the panniers of many small blue, and 
pink, and scarlet shirts, and coats, and stock- 
ings ; and when they had made them into two 
little heaps they knelt down and began to 
wash them in the river, taking no notice of 
him whatever. 

Jack stared at them. They were not much 
taller than himself, and they were not taking 
the slightest care of their handsome clothes ; 
then he looked at the old white horse, who was 


24 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


hanginsj his head over the lovely clear water 
with a very discontented air. 

At last the blue washerwoman said, “ I shall 
leave off now ; I’ve got a pain in my works.” 

“ Do,” said the other. “We’ll go home and 
have a cup of tea.” Then she glanced at Jack, 
who was still sitting in the boat, and said, 
“ Can you strike ? ” 

“ I can if I choose,” replied Jack, a little 
astonished at this speech. And the red and 
blue washerwomen wrung out the clothes, put 
them again into the panniers, and taking the 
old horse by the bridle, began gently to lead 
him away. 

“ I have a great mind to land,” thought Jack. 
“ I should not wonder at all if this is Fairy- 
land. So as the boat came here to please me, 
I shall ask it to stay where it is, in case I 
should want it again.” 

So he sprang ashore, and said to the boat, 
“ Stay just where you are, will you ? ” and he 
ran after the old women, calling to them, — 

“ Is there any law to prevent my coming 
into your country ? ” 


WINDING-UP TIME. 


25 


“ Wo ! ” cried the red-coated old woman, and 
the horse stopped, while the blue-coated woman 
repeated, “ Any law ? not that 1 know of ; 
but if you are a stranger here you had better 
look out.” 

“ Why ? ” asked Jack. 

“ You don’t suppose, do you,” she answered, 
“ that our Queen will wind up strangers ? ” 

While Jack was wondering what she meant, 
the other said, — 

“ I shouldn’t wonder if he goes eight days. 
Gee ! ” and the horse went on. 

“ E’o, wo ! ” said the other. 

ISTo, no. Gee ! I tell you,” cried the first. 

Upon this, to Jack’s intense astonishment, 
the old horse stopped, and said, speaking 
through his nose, — 

“ Now, then, which is it to be ? I’m willing 
to gee, and I’m agreeable to wo ; but what’s a 
fellow to do when you say them both to- 
gether ? ” 

“ Why, he talks ! ” exclaimed Jack. 

“ It’s because he’s got a cold in his head,” 
observed one of the washerwomen; “he al- 


26 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


ways talks when he’s got a cold, and there’s 
no pleasing him ; whatever you say, he’s not 
satisfied. Gee, Boney, do ! ” 

“ Gee it is, then,” said the horse, and began 
to jog on. 

‘‘ He spoke again ! ” said J ack, upon which 
the horse laughed, and Jack was quite alarmed. 

“ It appears that your horses don’t talk ? ” 
observed the blue-coated woman. 

“ Never,” answered Jack ; “ they can’t.” 

“You mean they won’t,” observed the old 
horse ; and though he spoke the words of man- 
kind, it was not in a voice like theirs. Still 
Jack felt that his was just the natural tone for 
a horse, and that it did not arise only from the 
length of his nose. “ You’ll find out some day, 
perhaps,” he continued, “whether horses can 
talk or not.” 

“ Shall I ? ” said Jack, very earnestly. 

“ They’ll tell,” proceeded the white horse. 
“ I wouldn’t be you when they tell how you’ve 
used them.” 

“ Have you been ill used ? ” said Jack, in an 
anxious tone. 


WINDING-UP TIME. 


27 


“ Yes, yes, of course he has,” one of the 
women broke in ; “ but he has come here to 
get all right again. This is a very wholesome 
country for horses ; isn’t it, Boney ? ’’ 

“ Yes,” said the horse. 

“ Well, then, jog on, there’s a dear,” contin- 
ued the old woman. “ Why, you will be young 
again soon, you know, — young, and gamesome, 
and handsome ; you’ll be quite a colt, by and 
by, and then we shall set you free to join your 
companions in the happy meadows.” 

The old horse was so comforted by this kind 
speech, that he pricked up his ears and quick- 
ened his pace considerably. 

“He was shamefully used,” observed one 
washerwoman. “ Look at him, how lean he is ! 
You can see all his ribs.” 

“ Yes,” said the other, as if apologizing for 
the poor old horse. “He gets low-spirited 
when he thinks of all he has gone through ; but 
he is a vast deal better already than he was. 
He used to live in London ; his master always 
carried a long whip to beat him with, and 
never spoke civilly to him.” 


28 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


“London ! ” exclaimed Jack ; “ why that is 
in my country. How did the horse get here ? ” 

“ That’s no business of yours,” answered one 
of the women. “ But I can tell you he came 
because he was wanted, which is more than 
you are.” 

“You let him alone,” said the horse, in a 
querulous tone. “ I don’t bear any malice.” 

“ Ho ; he has a good disposition, has Boney,” 
observed the red old woman. “ Pray, are you 
a boy ? ” 

“Yes,” said Jack. 

“ A real boy, that wants no winding up ^ ” 
inquired the old woman. 

“ I don’t know what you mean,” answered 
Jack ; “ but I am a real boy, certainly.” 

“ Ah ! ” she replied. “ Well, I thought you 
were, by the way Boney spoke to you. How 
frightened you must be ! I wonder what will 
be done to all your people for driving, and 
working, and beating so many beautiful crea- 
tures to death every year that comes ? They’ll 
have to pay for it some day, you may depend.” 

Jack was a little alarmed, and answered that 


WINDING-UP TIME. 29 

he had never been unkind himself to horses, 
and he was glad that Boney bore no malice. 

“ They worked him, and often drove him 
about all night in the miserable streets, and 
never let him have so much as a canter in a 
green field,” said one of the women ; “ but he’ll 
be all right now, only he has to begin at the 
wrong end.” 

“ What do you mean ? ” said Jack. 

“Why, in this country,” answered the old 
woman, “ they begin by being terribly old and 
stiff, and they seem miserable and jaded at 
first, but by degrees they get young again, as 
you heard me reminding him.” 

“Indeed,” said Jack; “and do you like 
that ? ” 

“ It has nothing to do with me,” she an- 
swered. “We are only here to take care of 
all the creatures that men have ill used. While 
they are sick and old, which they are when 
first they come to us, — after they are dead, you 
know, — we take care of them, and gradually 
bring them up to be young and happy 
again.” 


30 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


“ This must be a very nice country to live in, 
then,” said Jack. 

“ For horses it is,” said the old lady, signifi- 
cantly. 

“Well,” said Jack, “it does seem very full 
of haystacks, certainly, and all the air smells 
of fresh grass.” 

At this moment they came to a beautiful 
meadow, and the old horse stopped, and turn- 
ing to the blue-coated woman, said, “ Faxa, I 
think I could fancy a handful of clover.” 
Upon this Faxa snatched Jack’s cap off his 
head, and in a very active manner jumped over 
a little ditch, and gathering some clover, pres- 
ently brought it back full, handing it to the 
old horse with great civility. 

“ You shouldn’t be in such a hurry,” ob- 
served the old horse ; “ your weights will be 
running down some day, if you don’t mind.” 

“It’s all zeal,” observed the red-coated 
woman. 

Just then a little man, dressed like a groom, 
came running up, out of breath. “ Oh, here 
you are, Dow ! ” he exclaimed to the red-coated 


WINDING-UP TIME. 


31 


woman. Come along, will you ? Lady Betty 
wants you ; it’s such a hot day, and nobody, 
she says, can fan her so well as you can.” 

The red-coated woman, without a word, 
went off with the groom, and Jack thought 
he would go with them, for this Lady Betty 
could surely tell him whether the country was 
called Fairyland, or whether he must get into 
his boat and go farther. He did not like either 
to hear the way in which Faxa and Dow talked 
about their works and their weights ; so he 
asked Faxa to give him his cap, which she did, 
and he heard a curious sort of little ticking 
noise as he came close to her, which startled 
him. 

“ Oh, this must be Fairyland, I am sure,” 
thought Jack, “ for in my country our pulses 
beat quite differently from that.” 

“Well,” said Faxa, rather sharply, “do you 
find any fault with the way I go ? ” 

“ Ho,” said Jack, a little ashamed of having 
listened. “ I think you walk beautifully ; 
your steps are so regular.” 

“She’s machine-made,” observed the old 


32 


MOPSA I'HE fairy. 


horse, in a melancholy voice, and with a deep 
sigh. “ In the largest magnifying-glass you’ll 
hardly find the least fault with her chain. 
She’s not like the goods they turn out in 
Clerkenwell.” 

Jack was more and more startled, and so 
glad to get his cap and run after the groom 
and Dow to find Lady Betty, that he might be 
with ordinary human beings again ; but when 
he got up to them, he found that Lady Betty 
was a beautiful brown mare ! She was lying 
in a languid and rather affected attitude, with 
a load of fresh hay before her, and two attend- 
ants, one of whom stood holding a parasol 
over her head, and the other was fanning her. 

“ I’m so glad you are come, my good Dow,” 
said the brown mare. “ Don’t you think I am 
strong enough to-day to set off for the happy 
meadows ? ” 

‘‘Well,” said Dow, “I’m afraid not yet ; 
you must remember that it is of no use your 
leaving us till you have quite got over the 
effects of the fall.” 

Just then Lady Betty observed Jack, and 


WINDING-UP TIME. 


33 


said, “ Take that boy away ; he reminds me 
of a jockey.” 

The attentive groom instantly started for- 
ward, but Jack was too nimble for him ; he 
ran and ran with all his might, and only 
wished he had never left the boat. But still 
he heard the groom behind him ; and in fact 
the groom caught him at last, and held him so 
fast that struggling was of no use at all. 

“ You young rascal ! ” he exclaimed, as he 
recovered breath. “ How you do run ! It’s 
enough to break your mainspring.” 

“ What harm did I do ? ” asked Jack. “ I 
was only looking at the mare.” 

“ Harm ! ” exclaimed the groom ; “ harm 
indeed ! Why, you reminded her of a jockey. 
It’s enough to hold her back, poor thing ! — 
and we trying so hard, too, to make her forget 
what a cruel end she came to in the old world.” 

“ You need not hold me so tightly,” said 
Jack, “ I shall not run away again ; but,” he 
added, “ if this is Fairyland, it is not half such 
a nice country as I expected.” 

“ Fairyland ! ” exclaimed the groom, step- 
3 


34 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


ping back with surprise. “ Why, what made 
you think of such a thing ? This is only one 
of the border countries, where things are set 
right again that people have caused to go 
wrong in the world. The world, you know, is 
what men and women call their own home.” 

I know,” said Jack ; “ and that’s where I 
came from.” Then, as the groom seemed no 
longer to be angry, he went on : “ And I wish 
you would tell me about Lady Betty.” 

“ She was a beautiful fleet creature, of the 
racehorse breed,” said the groom ; “ and she 
won silver cups for her master, and then they 
made her run a steeple-chase, which frightened 
her, but still she won it ; and then they made 
her run another, and she cleared some terribly 
high hurdles, and many gates and ditches, till 
she came to an awful one, and at first she would 
not take it, but her rider spurred and beat her 
till she tried. It was beyond her powers, and 
she fell and broke both her forelegs. Then they 
shot her. After she had died that miserable 
death, we had her here, to make her all right 
again.” 


WINDING-UP TIME. 


85 


“Is this the only country where you set 
things right ? ” asked Jack. 

“ Certainly not,” answered the groom ; “ they 
lie about in all directions. Why, you might 
wander for years, and never come to the end 
of this one.” 

“ I am afraid I shall not find the one I am 
looking for,” said Jack, “ if your countries are 
so large.” 

“I don’t think our world is much larger 
than yours,” answered the groom. “ But come 
along ; I hear the bell, and we are a good way 
from the palace.” 

Jack, in fact, heard the violent ringing of a 
bell at some distance ; and when the groom 
began to run, he ran beside him, for he thought 
he should like to see the palace. As they ran, 
people gathered from all sides, — fields, cottages, 
mills, — till at last there was a little crowd, 
among whom Jack saw Dow and Faxa, and 
they were all making for a large house, the 
wide door of which was standing open. J ack 
stood with the crowd, and peeped in. There 
was a woman sitting inside upon a rocking- 


36 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


chair, — a tall, large woman, with a gold-colored 
gown on, — and beside her stood a table, covered 
with things that looked like keys. 

“ What is that woman doing ? ” said he to 
Faxa, who was standing close to him. 

“ Winding us up, to be sure,” answered Faxa. 
“ You don’t suppose, surely, that we can go 
forever ? ” 

‘‘ Extraordinary ! ” said Jack. “ Then are 
you wound up every evening, like watches ? ” 

‘‘ Unless we have misbehaved ourselves,” she 
answered ; “ and then she lets us run down.” 

“ And what then ? ” 

“What then?” repeated Faxa, “why, then 
we have to stop and stand against a wall, till 
she is pleased to forgive us, and let our friends 
carry us in to be set going again.” 

Jack looked in, and saw the people pass in 
and stand close by the woman. One after the 
other she took by the chin with her left hand, 
and with her right hand found a key that 
pleased her. It seemed to Jack that there was 
a tiny keyhole in the back of their heads, and 
that she put the key in and wound them up. 


WINDING-UP TIME. 


37 


“ You must take your turn with the others,” 
said the groom. 

“ There’s no keyhole in my head,” said Jack ; 

besides, I do not want any woman to wind 
me up.” 

“ But you must do as others do,” he per- 
sisted ; “ and if you have no keyhole, our Queen 
can easily have one made, I should think.” 

“ Make one in my head ! ” exclaimed Jack. 
“ She shall do no such thing.” 

“We shall see,” said Faxa, quietly. And 
Jack was so frightened that he set off, and ran 
back towards the river with all his might. 
Many of the people called to him to stop, but 
they could not run after him, because they 
wanted winding up. However, they would 
certainly have caught him if he had not been 
very quick, for before he got to the river he 
heard behind him the footsteps of those who 
had been first attended to by the Queen, and 
he had only just time to spring into the boat 
when they reached the edge of the water. 

ISTo sooner was he on board than the boat 
swung round, and got out again into the middle 


38 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


of the stream ; but he could not feel safe till 
not only was there a long reach of water be- 
tween him and the shore, but till he had gone 
so far down the river that the beautiful bay 
had passed out of sight, and the sun was going 
down. By this time he began to feel very tired 
and sleepy ; so, haviug looked at his fairies, 
and found that they were all safe and fast 
asleep, he laid down in the bottom of the boat, 
and fell into a doze, and then into a dream. 


CHAPTEE lY. 


BEES AND OTHER FELLOW-CREATURES. 

The dove laid some little sticks, 

Then began to coo ; 

The gnat took his trumpet up 
To play the day through ; 

The pie chattered soft and long — 

But that she always does ; 

The bee did all he had to do, 

And only said, “ Buzz.” 

When Jack at length opened his eyes, he 
found that it was night, for the full moon was 
shining ; but it was not at all a dark night, for 
he could see distinctly some black birds, that 
looked like ravens. They were sitting in a row 
on the edge of the boat. 

ISTow that he had fairies in his pockets, he 
could understand bird-talk, and he heard one of 
these ravens saying, “There is no meat so 
tender ; I wish I could pick their little eyes 
out.” 

“Yes,” said another, “fairies are delicate 

39 


40 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


eating indeed. We must speak Jack fair if we 
want to get at them.” And she heaved up a 
deep sigh. 

Jack lay still, and thought he had better 
pretend to be asleep ; but they soon noticed 
that his eyes were open, and one of them pres- 
ently walked up his leg and bowed, and asked 
if he was hungry. 

Jack said, “ JSTo.” 

“No more am I,” replied the raven ; “ not at 
all hungry.” Then she hopped off his leg, and 
Jack sat up. 

“ And how are the sweet fairies that my 
young master is taking to their home ? ” asked 
another of the ravens. “ I hope they are safe 
in my young master’s pockets ? ” 

Jack felt in his pockets. Yes, they were all 
safe ; but he did not take any of them out, lest 
the ravens should snatch at them. 

“ Eh ? ” continued the raven, pretending to 
listen ; “ did this dear young gentleman say 
that the fairies were asleep ? ” 

“ It doesn’t amuse me to talk about fairies,” 
said Jack ; “ but if you would explain some of 


BEES AND OTHER FELLOW-CREATURES. 41 

i 

the things in this country that I cannot make 
out, I should be very glad.” 

“ What things ? ” asked the blackest of the 
ravens. 

“ Why,” said Jack, “ I see a full moon lying 
down there among the water-flags, and just 
going to set, and there is a half-moon overhead 
plunging among those great gray clouds, and 
just this moment I saw a thin crescent moon 
peeping out between the branches of that tree.” 

“ Well,” said all the ravens at once, “ did 
the young master never see a crescent moon in 
the men and women’s world ? ” 

“ Oh, yes,” said Jack. 

“ Did he never see a full moon ? ” asked the 
ravens. 

“Yes, of course,” said Jack ; “but they are 
the same moon. I could never see all three of 
them at the same time.” 

The ravens were very much surprised at this 
and one of them said, — 

“ If my young master did not see the moons 
it must have been because he didn’t look. Per- 
haps my young master slept in a room, and had 


42 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


only one window ; if so, he couldn’t see all the 
sky at once.” 

“ I tell you, Eavens,” said Jack, laughing, 
“ that I KNOW there is never more than one 
moon in my country, and sometimes there is no 
moon at all ! ” 

Upon this all the ravens hung down their 
heads, and looked very much ashamed ; for 
there is nothing that birds hate so much as to 
be laughed at, and they believed that Jack was 
saying this to mock them, and that he knew 
what they had come for. So first one and then 
another hopped to the other end of the boat 
and fiew away, till at last there was only one 
left, and she appeared to be out of spirits, and 
did not speak again till he spoke to her. 

“ Eaven,” said Jack, “ there’s something very 
cold and slippery lying at the bottom of the 
boat. I touched it just now, and I don’t like 
it at all.” 

“ It’s a water-snake,” said the raven ; and 
she stooped and picked up a long thing with 
her beak, which she threw out, and then looked 
over. “ The water swarms with them, wicked. 


BEES AND OTHER FELLOW-CREATURES. 43 

murderous creatures ; they smell the young 
fairies, and they want to eat them.” 

Jack was so thrown off his guard that he 
snatched one fairy out, just to make sure that 
it was safe. It was the one with the mustache ; 
and, alas ! in one instant the raven flew at it, 
got it out of his hand, and pecked off its head 
before it had time to wake or Jack to rescue it. 
Then, as she slowly rose, she croaked, and said 
to Jack, “ You’ll catch it for this, my young 
master ! ” and she flew to the bough of a tree, 
where she flnished eating the fairy, and threw 
his little empty coat into the river. 

On this Jack began to cry bitterly, and to 
think what a foolish boy he had been. He 
was the more sorry because he did not even 
know that poor little fellow’s name. But he 
had heard the others calling by name to their 
companions, and very grand names they were 
too. One was Jovinian, — he was a very fierce- 
looking gentleman ; the other two were Kox- 
aletta and Mopsa. 

Presently, however. Jack forgot to be un- 
happy, for two of the moons went down, and 


4 : 4 : 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


then the sun rose, and he was delighted to find 
that however many moons there might be, 
there was only one sun, even in the country of 
the wonderful river. 

So on and on they went ; but the river was 
very wide, and the waves were boisterous. On 
the right brink was a thick forest of trees, with 
such heavy foliage that a little way off they 
looked like a bank, green, and smooth, and 
steep ; but as the light became clearer. Jack 
could see here and there the great stems, and 
see creatures like foxes, wild boars, and deer, 
come stealing down to drink in the river. 

It was very hot here ; not at all like the 
spring weather he had left behind. And as 
the low sunbeams shone into Jack’s face he said 
hastily, without thinking of what would occur, 
“ I wish I might land among those lovely 
glades on the left bank.” 

No sooner said than the boat began to make 
for the left bank, and the nearer they got 
towards it the more beautiful it became ; but 
also the more stormy were the reaches of water 
they had to traverse. 


BEES AND OTHER FELLOW-CREATURES. 45 

A lovely country indeed ! It sloped gently 
down to the water’s edge, and beautiful trees 
were scattered over it, soft, mossy grass grew 
everywhere, great old laburnum trees stretched 
their boughs down in patches over the water, 
and higher up camellias, almost as large as haw- 
thorns, grew together and mingled their red 
and white flowers. 

The country was not so open as a park, — it 
was more like a half-cleared woodland ; but 
there was a wide space just where the boat was 
steering for, that had no trees, only a few 
flowering shrubs. Here groups of strange- 
looking people were bustling about, and there 
were shrill fifes sounding, and drums. 

Farther back he saw rows of booths or tents 
under the shade of the trees. 

In another place some people dressed like 
gipsies had made fires of sticks just at the skirts 
of the woodland, and were boiling their pots. 
Some of these had very gaudy tilted carts, hung 
all over with goods, such as baskets, brushes, 
mats, little glasses, pottery, and beads. 

It seemed to be a kind of fair, to which people 


46 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


had gathered from all parts ; but there was not 
one house to be seen. All the goods were either 
hung upon trees or collected in strange-looking 
tents. 

The people were not all of the same race ; 
indeed, he thought the only human beings were 
the gipsies, for the folks who had tents were 
no taller than himself. 

How hot it was that morning ! and as the 
boat pushed itself into a little creek, and made 
its way among the beds of yellow and purple 
iris which skirted the brink, what a crowd of 
dragon-flies and large butterflies rose from 
them! 

“ Stay where you are ! ” cried Jack to the 
boat ; and at that instant such a splendid moth 
rose slowly, that he sprang on shore after it, 
and quite forgot the fair and the people in his 
desire to follow it. 

The moth settled on a great red honey-flower, 
and he stole up to look at it. As large as a 
swallow, it floated on before him. Its wings 
were nearly black, and they had spots of gold 
on them. 


BEES AND OTHER FELLOW-CREATURES. 47 

When it rose again Jack ran after it, till he 
found himself close to the rows of tents where 
the brown people stood ; and they began to cry 
out to him, “ What’ll you buy ? what’ll you buy, 
sir 1 ” and they crowded about him, so that he 
soon lost sight of the moth, and forgot every- 
thing else in his surprise at the booths. 

They were full of splendid things, — clocks 
and musical boxes, strange china ornaments, 
embroidered slippers, red caps, and many kinds 
of splendid silks and small carpets. In other 
booths were swords and dirks, glittering with 
jewels ; and the chatter of the people when 
they talked together was not in a language that 
Jack could understaad. 

Some of the booths were square, and evidently 
made of common canvas, for when you went 
into them, and the sun shone, you could dis- 
tinctly see the threads. 

But scattered a little farther on in groups were 
some round tents, which were far more curious. 
They were open on all sides, and consisted only of 
a thick canopy overhead, which was supported 
by one beautiful round pillar in the middle. 


48 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


Outside the canopy was white or brownish ; 
but when Jack stood under these tents, he saw 
that they were lined with splendid flutings of 
brown or pink silk : what looked like silk at 
least, for it was impossible to be sure whether 
these were real tents or gigantic mushrooms. 

They varied in^size, also, as mushrooms do, 
and in shape: some were large enough for 
twenty people to stand under them, and had 
flat tops with a brown lining ; others had dome- 
shaped roofs ; these were lined with pink, and 
would only shelter six or seven. 

The people who sold in these tents were as 
strange as their neighbors ; each had a little 
high cap on his head, in shape just like a bee- 
hive, and it was made of straw, and had a little 
hole in front. In fact. Jack very soon saw bees 
flying in and out, and it was evident that these 
people had their honey made on the premises. 
They were chiefly selling country produce. 
They had cheeses so large as to reach to their 
waists, and the women trundled them along as 
boys do their hoops. They sold a great many 
kinds of seed, too, in wooden bowls, and cakes 



It avas impossible to be sure whether these were Real 
Tents or Gigantic Mushrooms. 







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BEES AND OTHER FELLOW-CREATURES. 49 

and good things to eat, such as gilt gingerbread. 
Jack bought some of this, and found it very 
nice indeed. But when he took out his money 
to pay for it, the little man looked rather 
strangely at it, and turned it over with an air 
of disgust. Then Jack saw him hand it to his 
wife, who also seemed to dislike it ; and pres- 
ently Jack observed that they followed him 
about, first on one side, then on the other. At 
last, the little woman slipped her hand into his 
pocket, and Jack, putting his hand in directly, 
found his sixpence had been returned. 

“ Why, you’ve given me back my money ! ” 
he said. 

The little woman put her hands behind her. 
“ I do not like it,” she said ; “ it’s dirty ; at least, 
it’s not new.” 

“ [N’o, it’s not new,” said Jack, a good deal 
surprised, “ but it is a good sixpence.” 

“ The bees don’t like it,” continued the little 
woman. “ They like things to be neat and new, 
and that sixpence is bent.” 

“ What shall I give you then ? ” said Jack. 

The good little woman laughed and blushed. 

4 


50 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


“ This young gentleman has a beautiful whistle 
round his neck,” she observed, politely, but did 
not ask for it. 

Jack had a dog-whistle, so he took it off and 
gave it to her. 

“ Thank you for the bees,” she said. “ They 
love to be called home when we’ve collected 
flowers for them.” 

So she made a pretty little courtesy, and went 
away to her customers. 

There were some very strange creatures also, 
about the same height as Jack, who had no tents, 
and seemed there to buy, not to sell. Yet they 
looked poorer than the other folks, and they 
were also very cross and discontented ; nothing 
pleased them. Their clothes were made of 
moss, and their mantles of feathers ; and they 
talked in a queer whistling tone of voice, and 
carried their skinny little children on their backs 
and on their shoulders. 

They were treated with great respect by the 
people in the tents ; and when Jack asked his 
friend to whom he had given the whistle what 
they were, and where they got so much money 


BEES AND OTHER FELLOW- CREATURES. 61 

as they had, she replied that they lived over the 
hills, and were afraid to come in their best 
clothes. They were rich and powerful at home, 
and they came shabbily dressed, and behaved 
humbly, lest their enemies should envy them. 
It was very dangerous, she said, to fairies to be 
envied. 

Jack wanted to listen to their strange whis- 
tling talk, but he could not for the noise and 
cheerful chattering of the brown folks, and 
more still for the screaming and talking of 
parrots. 

Among the goods were hundreds of splendid 
gilt cages, which were hung by long gold 
chains from the trees. Each cage contained a 
parrot and his mate, and they all seemed to be 
very unhappy indeed. 

The parrots could talk, and they kept scream- 
ing to the discontented women to buy things 
for them, and trying very hard to attract at- 
tention. 

One old parrot made himself quite conspicu- 
ous by these efforts. He flung himself against 
the wires of his cage, he squalled, he screamed. 


52 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


he knocked the floor with his beak, till Jack 
and one of the customers came running up to 
see what was the matter. 

“ What do you make such a fuss for ? ” cried 
the discontented woman. “ You’ve set your 
cage swinging with knocking yourself about ; 
and what good does that do ? I cannot break 
the spell and open it for you.” 

“ I know that,” answered the parrot, sobbing ; 
“ but it hurts my feelings so that you should 
take no notice of me now that I have come 
down in the world.” 

“ Yes,” said the parrot’s mate, “ it hurts our 
feelings.” 

“ I haven’t forgotten you,” answered the wo- 
man, more crossly than ever ; “ I was buying 
a measure of maize for you when you began to 
make such a noise.” 

Jack thought this was the queerest conver- 
sation he had ever heard in his life ; and he was 
still more surprised when the bird answered, — 

“ I would much rather you would buy me a 
pocket-handkerchief. Here we. are, shut up, 
without a chance of getting out, and with no- 


BEES AND OTHER FELLOW-CREATURES. 53 

body to pity us ; and Tve can’t even have the 
comfort of crying, because we’ve got nothing 
to wipe our eyes with.” 

“ But at least,” replied the woman, “ you 
CAN cry now if you please, and when you had 
your other face you could not.” 

“ Buy me a handkerchief,” sobbed the parrot. 

“I can’t afford both,” whined the cross 
woman, and I’ve paid now for the maize.” 
So saying, she went back to the tent to fetch 
her present to the parrots ; and as their cage 
was still swinging Jack put out his hand to 
steady it for them, and the instant he did so 
they became perfectly silent, and all the other 
parrots on that tree, who had been flinging 
themselves about in their cages, left off scream- 
ing, and became silent too. 

The old parrot looked very cunning. His 
cage hung by such a long gold chain that it 
was just on a level with Jack’s face, and so 
many odd things had happened that day that 
it did not seem more odd than usual to hear 
him say, in a tone of great astonishment, — 

“ It’s a BOY, if ever there was one ! ” 


54 : 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


“Yes,” said Jack ; “ rm a boy.” 

“ You won’t go yet, will you ? ” said the parrot. 

“ No, don’t,” said a great many other par- 
rots. Jack agreed to stay a little while, upon 
which they all thanked him. 

“ I had no notion you were a boy till you 
touched my cage,” said the old parrot. 

Jack did not know how this could have told 
him, so he only answered, “ Indeed ! ” 

“ I’m a fairy,” observed the parrot, in a con- 
fidential tone. “We are imprisoned here by 
our enemies the gipsies.” 

“ So we are,” answered a chorus of other 
parrots. 

“ I’m sorry for that,” replied J ack. “ I’m 
friends with the fairies.” 

“ Don’t tell,” said the parrot, drawing a film 
over his eyes, and pretending to be asleep. At 
that moment his friend in the moss petticoat 
and feather cloak came up with a little meas- 
ure of maize, and poured it into the cage. 

“ Here, neighbor,” she said ; “ I must say 
good-by now, for the gipsy is coming this way, 
and I want to buy some of her goods.” 


BEES AND OTHER FELLOW-CREATURES. 55 

‘‘Well, thank you,” answered the parrot, 
sobbing again ; “ but I could have wished it 
had been a pocket-handkerchief.” 

“ I’ll lend you my handkerchief,” said Jack. 
“ Here ! ” And he drew it out, and pushed it 
between the wires. 

The parrot and his wife were in a great 
hurry to get Jack’s handkerchief. They pulled 
it in very hastily ; but instead of using it they 
rolled it up into a ball, and the parrot- wife 
tucked it under her wing. 

“It makes me tremble all over,” said she, 
“ to think of such good luck.” 

“ I say,” observed the parrot to Jack, “ I 
know all about it now. You’ve got some of 
my people in your pockets, — not of my own 
tribe, but fairies.” 

By this Jack was sure that the parrot really 
was a fairy himself, and he listened to what he 
had to say the more attentively. 


CHAPTER V. 


THE PAEROT IN HIS SHAWL. 

That handkerchief 
Did an Egyptian to my mother give : 

She was a charmer, and could almost read 
The thoughts of people Othello, 

“ That gipsy woman who is coming with her 
cart,” said the parrot, “is a fairy too, and 
very malicious. It was she and others of her 
tribe who caught us and put us into these 
cages, for they are more powerful than we. 
Mind you do not let her allure you into the 
woods, nor wheedle you or frighten you into 
giving her any of those fairies.” 

“Ho,” said Jack; “ I will not.” 

“ She sold us to the brown people,” continued 
the parrot. “ Mind you do not buy anything 
of her, for your money in her palm would act 
as a charm against you.” 

“ She has a baby,” observed the parrot-wife, 

scornfully. 

55 


THE PARROT IN HIS SHAWL. 57 

“Yes, a baby,” repeated the old parrot; 
“ and I hope by means of that baby to get her 
driven away, and perhaps get free myself. I 
shall try to put her in a passion. Here she 
comes.” 

There she was indeed, almost close at 
hand. She had a little cart ; her goods were 
hung all about it, and a small horse drew 
it slowly on, and stopped when she got a cus- 
tomer. 

Several gipsy children »vere with her, and 
as the people came running together over the 
grass to see her goods, she sang a curious 
kind of song, which made them wish to buy 
them. 

Jack turned from the parrot’s cage as she 
came up. He had heard her singing a little 
way off, and now, before she began again, he 
felt that already her searching eyes had found 
him out, and taken notice that he was different 
from the other people. 

When she began to sing her selling song, he 
felt a most curious sensation. He felt as if 
there were some cobwebs before his face, and 


58 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


he put up his hand as if to clear them away. 
There were no real cobwebs, of course ; and yet 
he again felt as if they floated from the gipsy 
woman to him, like gossamer threads, and 
attracted him towards her. So he gazed at 
her, and she at him, till Jack began to forget 
how the parrot had warned him. 

He saw her baby too, wondered whether it 
was heavy for her to carry, and wished he 
could help her. I mean, he saw that she had 
a baby on her arm. It was wrapped in a 
shawl, and had a handkerchief over its face. 
She seemed very fond of it, for she kept hush- 
ing it ; and Jack softly moved nearer and 
nearer to the cart, till the gipsy woman smiled, 
and suddenly began to sing, — 

My good man— he's an old, old man 
And my good man got a fall, 

To buy me a bargain so fast he ran 
When he heard the gipsies call : 

“ Buy, buy brushes, > 

Baskets wrought o’ rushes. 

Buy them, buy them, take them, try them, 
Buy, dames all.” 

My old man, he has money and land, 

And a young, young wife am I. 


THE PARROT IN HIS SHAWL. 


59 


Let him put the penny in my white hand 
When he hears the gipsies cry ; 

“ Buy, buy laces, 

Veils to screen your faces. 

Buy them, buy them, take and try them. 

Buy, maids, buy.” 

When the gipsy had finished her song, Jack 
felt as if he was covered all over with cobwebs ; 
but he could not move away, and he did not 
mind them now. All his wish was to please 
her, and get close to her ; so when she said, in 
a soft, wheedling voice, “ What will you please 
to buy, my pretty gentleman ? ” he was just 
going to answer that he would buy anything 
she recommended, when, to his astonishment 
and displeasure, for he thought it very rude, 
the parrot suddenly burst into a violent fit 
of coughing, which made all the customers 
stare. “ That’s to clear my throat,” he said, 
in a most impertinent tone of voice ; and 
then he began to beat time with his foot, 
and sing, or rather scream out, an extremely 
saucy imitation of the gipsy’s song, and all 
his parrot friends in the other cages joined 
in the chorus. 


60 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


My fair lady’s a dear, dear lady — 

I walked by her side to woo. 

In a garden alley, so sweet and shady, 

She answered, “ I love not you, 

John, John Brady,” 

Quoth my dear lady, 

“Pray now, pray now, go your way now, 

Do, John, do I ” 

At first the gipsy did not seem to know 
where that mocking song came from, but when 
she discovered that it was her prisoner, the old 
parrot, who was thus daring to imitate her, 
she stood silent and glared at him, and her face 
was almost white with rage. 

When he came to the end of the verse he 
pretended to burst into a violent fit of sobbing 
and crying, and screeched out to his wife, 
“ Mate 1 mate ! hand up my handkerchief. 
Oh 1 oh ! it’s so affecting, this song is.” 

Upon this the other parrot pulled Jack’s 
handkerchief from under her wing, hobbled 
up, and began, with a great show of zeal, to 
wipe his horny beak with it. But this was too 
much for the gipsy; she took a large brush 
from her cart, and flung it at the cage with all 
her might. 


THE PARROT IN HIS SHAWL. 


61 


This set it violently swinging backwards and 
forwards, but did not stop the parrot, who 
screeched out, “ How delightful it is to be 
swung ! ” And then he began to sing another 
verse in the most impudent tone possible, and 
with a voice that seemed to ring through 
Jack’s head, and almost pierce it : — 

Yet my fair lady’s my own, own lady, ' 

For I passed another day ; 

While making her moan, she sat all alone, ^ 
And thus and thus did she say : 

“ John, John Brady,” 

Quoth my dear lady, 

“ Do now, do now, once more woo now, 

Pray, John, pray I ” 

“ It’s beautiful ! ” screeched the parrot-wife, 
“and so ap-pro-pri-ate.” Jack was delighted 
when she managed slowly to say this long word 
with her black tongue, and he burst out laugh- 
ing. In the meantime a good many of the 
brown people came running together, attracted 
by the noise of the parrots and the rage of the 
gipsy, who flung at his cage, one after the 
other, all the largest things she had in her cart. 
But nothing did the parrot any harm ; the 
more violently his cage swung, the louder he 


62 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


sang, till at last the wicked gipsy seized her 
poor little young baby, who was lying in her 
arms, rushed frantically at the cage as it flew 
swiftly through the air towards her, and struck 
at it with the little creature’s head. “ Oh, you 
cruel, cruel woman ! ” cried Jack, and all the 
small mothers who were standing near with 
their skinny children on their shoulders, 
screamed out with terror and indignation ; but 
only for one instant, for the handkerchief flew 
off that had covered its face, and was caught in 
the wires of the cage, and all the people saw 
that it was not a real baby at all, but a bundle 
of clothes, and its head was a turnip. 

Yes, a turnip ! You could see that as plainly 
as possible, for though the green leaves had 
been cut off, their stalks were visible through 
the lace cap that had been tied on it. 

Upon this all the crowd pressed closer, throw- 
ing her baskets, and brushes, and laces and beads 
at the gipsy, and calling out, “We will have 
none of your goods, your false woman ! Give 
us back our money, or we will drive you out 
of the fair. You’ve stuck a stick into a turnip, 


THE PARROT IN HIS SHAWL. 63 

and dressed it up in baby clothes. You’re a 
cheat ! a cheat ! ” 

“My sweet gentlemen, my kind ladies,” 
began the gipsy ; but baskets and brushes flew 
at her so fast that she was obliged to sit down 
on the grass and hold up the sham baby to 
screen her face. 

While this was going on, J ack felt that the 
cobwebs which had seemed to float about his 
face were all gone ; he did not care at all any 
more about the gipsy, and began to watch the 
parrots with great attention. 

He observed that when the handkerchief 
stuck between the cage wires, the parrots caught 
it, and drew it inside; and then Jack saw the 
cunning old bird himself lay it on the floor, fold 
it crosswise like a shawl, and put it on his wife. 

Then she jumped upon the perch, and held 
it with one foot, looking precisely like an old 
lady with a parrot’s head. Then he folded 
Jack’s handkerchief in the same way, put it on, 
and got upon the perch beside his wife, scream- 
ing out, in his most piercing tone, — 

I like shawls ; they’re so becoming.” 


u 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


iN’ow the gipsy did not care at all what those 
inferior people thought of her, and she was 
calmly counting out their money, to return it ; 
but she was very desirous to make Jack forget 
her behavior, and had begun to smile again, 
and tell him she had only been joking, when 
the parrot spoke, and, looking up, she saw the 
two birds sitting side by side, and the parrot- 
wife was screaming in her mate’s ear, though 
neither of them was at all deaf, — 

“ If Jack lets her allure him into the woods, 
he’ll never come out again. She’ll hang him 
up in a cage, as she did us. I say, how does 
my shawl fit ? ” 

So saying, the parrot-wife whisked herself 
round on the perch, and lo ! in the corner of 
the handkerchief were seen some curious letters, 
marked in red. When the crowd saw these, 
they drew a little farther off, and glanced at 
one another with alarm. 

“ You look charming, my dear ; it fits wells ! ” 
screamed the old parrot in answer. “ A word 
in your ear ; ‘ Share and share alike ’ is a fine 
motto.” 


THE PARROT IN HIS SHAWL. 65 

“ What do you mean by all this ? ” said the 
gipsy, rising, and going with slow steps to the 
cage, and speaking cautiously. 

“ Jack,” said the parrot, “do they ever eat 
handkerchiefs in your part of the country ? ” 

“No, never,” answered Jack. 

“ Hold your tongue and be reasonable,” said 
the gipsy, trembling. “ What do you want ? 
I’ll do it, whatever it is.” 

“ But do they never pick out the marks ? ” 
continued the parrot. O Jack ! are you sure 
they never pick out the marks ? ” 

“The marks?” said Jack, considering. 
“ Yes, perhaps they do.” 

“ Stop ! ” cried the gipsy, as the old parrot 
made a peck at the strange letters. “ Oh ! 
you’re hurting me. What do you want? I 
say again, tell me what you want, and you 
shall have it.” 

“We want to get out,” replied the parrot; 
“ you must undo the spell.” 

“ Then give me my handkerchief,” answered 
the gipsy, “ to bandage my eyes. I dare not 
say the words with my eyes open. You had 
S 


66 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


no business to steal it. It was woven by hu- 
man hands, so that nobody can see through it ; 
and if you don’t give it to me, j^ou’ll never get 
out, — no never ! ” 

“ Then,” said the old parrot, tossing his shawl 
off, “you may have Jack’s handkerchief; it 
will bandage your eyes just as well. It was 
woven over the water, as yours was.” 

“ It won’t do ! ” cried the gipsy, in terror ; 
“ give me my own.” 

“ I tell you,” answered the parrot, “ that you 
shall have Jack’s handkerchief; you can do no 
harm with that.” 

By this time the parrots all around had be- 
come perfectly silent, and none of the people 
ventured to say a word, for they feared the 
malice of the gipsy. She was trembling 
dreadfully, and her dark eyes, which had been 
so bright and piercing, had become dull and 
almost dim; but when she found there was 
no help for it, she said, — 

“ Well, pass out Jack’s handkerchief. I will 
set you free if you will bring out mine with 
you.” 


THE PARROT IN HIS SHAWL. 67 

“ Share and share alike,” answered the par- 
rot ; “ you must let all my friends out too.” 

“ Then I won’t let you out,” answered the 
gipsy. “ You shall come out first, and give me 
my handkerchief, or not one of their cages 
will I undo. So take your choice.” 

“My friends, then,” answered the brave old 
parrot ; and he poked Jack’s handkerchief out 
to her through the wires. 

The wondering crowd stood by to look, and 
the gipsy bandaged her eyes tightly with the 
handkerchief ; and then, stooping low, she be- 
gan to murmur something and clap her hands 
— softly at first, but by degrees more and more 
violently. The noise was meant to drown the 
words she muttered ; but as she went on clap- 
ping, the bottom of cage after cage fell clatter- 
ing down. Out fiew the parrots by hundreds, 
screaming and congratulating one another ; and 
there was such a deafening din that not only the 
sound of her spell, but the clapping of her 
hands, was quite lost in it. 

But all this time Jack was very busy ; for 
the moment the gipsy had tied up her eyes. 


68 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


the old parrot snatched the real handkerchief 
off his wife’s shoulders, and tied it around her 
neck. Then she pushed out her head through 
the wires, and the old parrot called to Jack, 
and said, “ Pull ! ” 

Jack took the ends of the handkerchief, 
pulled terribly hard, and stopped. “ Go on ! go 
on ! ” screamed the old parrot. 

“ I shall pull her head off,” cried J ack. 

“ No matter,” cried the parrot ; “ no matter, — 
only pull.” 

Well, Jack did pull, and he actually did pull 
her head off ! nearly tumbling backward him- 
self as he did it ; but he saw what the whole 
thing meant then, for there was another head 
inside, — a fairy’s head. 

Jack flung down the old parrot’s head and 
great beak, for he saw that what he had to do 
was to clear the fairy of its parrot covering. 
The poor little creature seemed nearly dead, it 
was so terribly squeezed in the wires. It had a 
*green gown or robe on, with an ermine collar ; 
and Jack got hold of this dress, stripped the 
fairy out of the parrot feathers, and dragged 


THE PARROT IN HIS SHAWL 69 

her through, — velvet robe, and crimson girdle, 
and little yellow shoes. She was very much 
exhausted, but a kind brown woman took her 
instantly, and laid her in her bosom. She 
was a splendid little creature about half a foot 
long. 

“ There’s a brave boy ! ” cried the parrot. 
Jack glanced round, and saw that not all the par- 
rots were free yet, the gipsy was still mutter- 
ing her spell. 

He returned the handkerchief to the parrot, 
who put it round his own neck, and again Jack 
pulled. But oh ! what a tough old parrot that 
was, and how Jack tugged before his cunning 
head would come off ! It did, however, at 
last ; and just as a fine fairy was pulled 
through, leaving his parrot skin and the hand- 
kerchief behind him, the gipsy untied her 
eyes, and saw what Jack had done. 

“ Give me my handkerchief ! ” she screamed, 
in despair. 

“It’s in the cage, gipsy,” answered Jack; 
“ you can get it yourself. Say your words 
again.” 


70 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


But the gipsy’s spell would only open 
places where she had confined fairies, and no 
fairies were in the cage now. 

“ No, no, no ! ” she screamed ; ‘‘ too late ! 
Hide me ! O good people, hide me ! ” 

But it was indeed too late. The parrots had 
been wheeling in the air, hundreds and hun- 
dreds of them, high above her head ; and as 
she ceased speaking, she fell shuddering on the 
ground, drew her cloak over her face, and down 
they came, swooping in one immense flock, and 
settled so thickly all over her that she was 
completely covered ; from her shoes to her head 
not an atom of her was to be seen. 

All the people stood gravely looking on. 
So did Jack, but he could not see much for 
the fluttering of the parrots, nor hear anything 
for their screaming voices ; but at last he made 
one of the cross people hear when he shouted 
to her, “What are they going to do to the 
poor gipsy?” 

“ Make her take her other form,” she re- 
plied ; “ and then she cannot hurt us while she 
stays in our country. She is a fairy, as we 


THE PARROT IN HIS SHAWL. 

have just found out, and all fairies have tvsro 
forms.” 

“ Oh ! ” said Jack ; but he had no time for 
more questions. 

The screaming and fighting, and tossing 
about of little bits of cloth and cotton, ceased ; 
a black lump heaved itself up from the ground 
among the parrots ; and as they flew aside, an 
ugly great condor, with a bare neck, spread 
out its wings, and, skimming the ground, sailed 
slowly away. 

‘‘‘ They have pecked her so that she can 
hardly rise,” exclaimed the parrot fairy. “ Set 
me on your shoulder. Jack, and let me see the 
end of it.” 

Jack set him there ; and his little wife, who 
had recovered herself, sprang from her friend 
the brown woman, and sat on the other 
shoulder. He then ran on, — the tribe of brown 
people and mushroom people, and the feather- 
coated folks running too, — after the great black 
bird, who skimmed slowly on before them till 
she got to the gipsy carts, when out rushed 
the gipsies, armed with poles, milking-stools. 


72 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


spades, and everything they could get hold 
of to beat back the people and. the parrots 
from hunting their relation, who had folded 
her tired wings, and was skulking under 
a cart, with rulhed feathers and a scowling 
eye. 

Jack was so frightened at the violent way in 
which the gipsies [and the other tribes were 
knocking each other about, that he ran off, 
thinking he had seen enough of such a danger- 
ous country. 

As he passed the place where that evil- 
minded gipsy had been changed, he found the 
ground strewed with little bits of her clothes. 
Many parrots were picking them up, and pok- 
ing them into the cage where the handkerchief 
was ; and presently another parrot came with 
a lighted brand, which she had pulled from one 
of the gipsies’ fires. 

“That’s right,” said the fairy on Jack’s 
shoulder, when he saw his friend push the 
brand between the wires of what had been his 
cage, and set the gipsy’s handkerchief on fire, 
and all the bits of her clothes with it. She 


THE PARROT IN HIS SHAWL. 73 

won’t find much of herself here,” he observed, 
as Jack went on. “ It will not be very easy to 
put herself together again.” 

So Jack moved away. He was tired of the 
noise and confusion ; and the sun was just set- 
ting as he reached the little creek where his 
boat lay. 

Then the parrot fairy and his wife sprang 
down, and kissed their hands to him as he 
stepped on board, and pushed the boat off. He 
saw, when he looked back, that a great fight 
was still going on ; so he was glad to get away, 
and he wished his two friends good-by, and set 
off, the old parrot fairly calling after him, “ My 
relations have put some of our favorite food on 
board for you.” Then they again thanked him 
for his good help, and sprang into a tree, and 
the boat began to go down the wonderful 
river. 

“ This has been a most extraordinary day,” 
thought Jack; “ the strangest day I have had 
yet.” And after he had eaten a good supper 
of what the parrots had brought, he felt so 
tired and sleepy that he laid down in the boat. 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


■ 74 

and presently fell fast asleep. His fairies were 
sound asleep too in his pockets, and nothing 
happened of the least consequence ; so he slept 
comfortably till morning. 


CHAPTER YI. 

THE TOWN WITH NOBODY IN IT. 

“ Master,” quoth the auld hound, , 

Where will ye go ? ” 

“[Over moss, over muir. 

To court my new jo.” 

“ Master, though the night be merk, 

I’se follow through the snow, 

“ Court her, master, court her, 

So shall ye do weel ; 

But and ben she’ll guide the house, 

I’se get milk and meal. 

Ye’se get lilting while she sits 
With her rock and reel.” 

For, oh ! she has a sweet tongue. 

And een that look down, 

A gold girdle for her waist, 

And a purple gown. 

She has a good word forbye 
Fra a’ folk in the town.” 

Soon after sunrise they came to a great city, 

and it was perfectly still. There were grand 

towers and terraces, wharves, too, and a large 

75 


76 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


market, but there was nobody anywhere to be 
seen. Jack thought that might be because it 
was so early in the morning ; and when the 
boat ran itself up against a wooden wharf and 
stopped, he jumped ashore, for he thought this 
must be the end of his journey. A delightful 
town it was, if only there had been any people 
in it ! The market-place was full of stalls, on 
which were spread toys, baskets, fruit, butter, 
vegetables, and all the other things that are 
usually sold in a market. 

Jack walked about in it. Then he looked in 
at the open doors of the houses, and at last, find- 
ing that they were all empty, he walked into 
one, looked at the rooms, examined the picture- 
books, rang the bells, and set the musical-boxes 
going. Then, after he had shouted a good deal, 
and tried in vain to make some one hear, he 
went back to the edge of the river where his 
boat was lying, and the water was so delight- 
fully clear and calm, that he thought he would 
bathe. So he took off his clothes, and folding 
them very carefully, so as not to hurt the fairies, 
laid them down beside a haycock, and went in, 



Jack asked her if she knew anything about his 

Stockings. 



THE TOWN WITH NOBODY IN IT. 77 

and ran about and paddled for a long time, — 
much longer than there was any occasion for ; 
but then he had nothing to do. 

When at last he had finished, he ran to the 
hay-cock and began to dress himself ; but he 
could not find his stockings, and after looking 
about for some time he was obliged to put on 
his clothes without them, and he was going to 
put his boots on his bare feet, when, walking 
to the other side of the hay-cock, he saw a 
little old woman about as large as himself. She 
had a pair of spectacles on, and she was knitting. 

She looked so sweet-tempered that Jack 
asked her if she knew anything about his 
stockings. 

“It will be time enough to ask for them 
when you have had your breakfast,” said she. 
“Sit down. Welcome to our town. How do 
you like it ? ” 

“I should like it very much indeed,” said 
Jack, “if there was anybody in it.” 

“I’m glad of that,” said the woman. 
“ You’ve seen a good deal of it; but it pleases 
me to find that you are a very honest boy. You 


78 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


did not take anything at all. I am honest 
too.” 

“Yes,” said Jack, “ of course you are.” 

“ And as I am pleased with you for being 
honest,” continued the little woman, “ I shall 
give you some breakfast out of my basket.” 
So she took out a saucer full of honey, a roll 
of bread, and a cup of milk. 

“ Thank you,” said Jack, “ but I am not a 
beggar -boy ; I have got a half-crown, a shilling, 
a sixpence, and two pence ; so I can buy this 
breakfast of you, if you like. You look very 
poor.” 

“ Do I ? ” said the little woman, softly ; and 
she went on knitting, and Jack began to eat 
the breakfast. 

“I wonder what has become of my stock- 
ings,” said Jack. 

“ You will never see them any more,” said 
the old woman. “ I threw them into the river, 
and they floated away.” 

“ Why did you ? ” asked Jack. 

The little woman took no notice ; but pres- 
ently she had flnished a beautiful pair of stock- 


THE TOWN WITH NOBODY IN IT. 79 

ings, and she handed them to Jack and 
said, — 

“ Is that like the pair you lost ? ” 

Oh no,” said Jack; “these are much more 
beautiful stockings than mine.” 

“ Do you like them as well ? ” asked the fairy 
woman. 

“ I like them much better,” said Jack, put- 
ting them on. “ How clever you are ! ” 

“Would you like to wear these,” said the 
woman, “ instead of yours ? ” 

She gave Jack such a strange look when she 
said this, that he was afraid to take them, and 
answered, — 

“ I shouldn’t like to wear them if you think 
I had better not.” 

“ Well,” she answered, “ I am very honest, 
as I told you ; and therefore I am obliged to 
say that if I were you I would not wear those 
stockings on any account.” 

“ Why not ? ” said Jack ; for she looked so 
sweet-tempered that he could not help trusting 
her. 

“ Why not ? ” repeated the fairj^ ; “ why, be- 


80 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


cause when you have those stockings on, your 
feet belong to me.” 

“ Oh ! ” said Jack. “ Well, if you think that 
matters. I’ll take them off again. Do you think 
it matters ? ” 

“ Yes,” said the fairy woman ; it matters, 
because I am a slave, and my master can make 
me do whatever he pleases, for I am completely 
in his power. So, if he found out that I had 
knitted these stockings for you, he would make 
me order you to walk into his mill, — the mill 
which grinds the corn for the town ; and there 
you would have to grind and grind till I got 
free again.” 

When Jack heard this, he pulled off the 
beautiful stockings, and laid them on the old 
woman’s lap. Upon this she burst out crying, 
as if her heart would break. 

“ If my fairies that I have in my pocket 
would only wake,” said Jack, “ I would fight 
your master ; for if he is no bigger than you are, 
perhaps I could beat him, and get you away.” 

“ No, Jack,” said the little woman ; “ that 
would be of no use. The only thing you could 


THE TOWN WITH NOBODY IN IT. 81 

do would be to buy me ; for my cruel master 
has said that if ever I am late again he shall 
sell me in the slave market to the brown people, 
who work underground. And, though I am 
dreadfully afraid of my master, I mean to be 
late to-day, in hopes (as you are kind, and as 
you have some money) that you will come to 
the slave-market and buy me. Can you buy 
me. Jack, to be your slave ? ” 

“ I don’t want a slave,” said Jack ; “ and, be- 
sides, I have hardly any money to buy you 
with.” 

“ But it is real money,” said the fairy woman, 
“ not like what my master has. His money 
has to be made every week, for if there comes 
a hot day it cracks, so it never has time to look 
old, as your half-crown does ; and that is how 
we know the real money, for we cannot imitate 
anything that is old. Oh, now, now it is twelve 
o’clock ! now I arm late again ! and though I 
said I would do it, I am so frightened ! ” 

So saying, the little woman ran off towards 
the town, wringing her hands, and Jack ran 

beside her. 

6 


82 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


“ How am I to find your master ? ” he said. 

“ O Jack, buy me ! buy me ! ” cried the fairy 
woman. “You will find me in the slave- 
market. Bid high for me. Go back and put 
your boots on, and bid high.” 

How Jack had nothing on his feet, so he left 
the poor little woman to run into the town by 
herself, and went back to put his boots on. 
They were very uncomfortable, as he had no 
stockings ; but he did not much mind that, and 
he counted his money. There was the half- 
crown that his grandmamma had given him on 
his birthday, there was a shilling, a sixpence, 
and two pence, besides a silver fourpenny-piece 
which he had forgotten. He then marched 
into the town ; and now it was quite full of 
people, — all of them little men and women 
about his own height. They thought he was 
somebody of consequence, and they called out 
to him to buy their goods. And he bought 
some stockings, and said, “What I want to 
buy now is a slave.” 

So they showed him the way to the slave- 
market, and there whole rows of odd-looking 


THE TOWN WITH NOBODY IN IT. 83 

little people were sitting, while in front of them 
stood the slaves. 

Now Jack had observed as he came along 
how very disrespectful the dogs of that town 
were to the people. They had a habit of going 
up to them and smelling at their legs, and even 
gnawing their feet as they sat before the little 
tables selling their wares ; and what made this 
more surprising was that the people did not 
always seem to find out when they were being 
gnawed. But the moment the dogs saw Jack 
they came and fawned on him, and two old 
hounds followed him all the way to the slave- 
market ; and when he took a seat one of them 
lay down at his feet, and said, “ Master, set 
your handsome feet on my back, that they 
may be out of the dust.” 

“Don’t be afraid of him,” said the other 
hound ; “ he won’t gnaw your feet. He knows 
well enough that they are real ones.” 

“Are the other people’s feet not real?” 
asked Jack. 

“ Of course not,” said the hound. “ They 
had a feud long ago with the fairies, and they 


84 : 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


all went one night into a great corn-field which 
belonged to these enemies of theirs, intending 
to steal the corn. So they made themselves 
invisible, as they are always obliged to do till 
twelve o’clock at noon; but before morning 
dawn, the wheat being quite ripe, down came 
the fairies with their sickles, surrounded the 
field, and cut the corn. So all their legs of 
course got cut off with it, for when they are 
invisible they cannot stir. Ever since that 
they have been obliged to make their legs of 
wood.” 

While the hound was telling this story Jack 
looked about, but he did not see one slave who 
was in the least like his poor little friend, and 
he was beginning to be afraid that he should 
not find her, when he heard two people talking 
together. 

“ Good day ! ” said one. “ So you have sold 
that good-for-nothing slave of yours ? ” 

“Yes,” answered a very cross-looking old 
man. “ She was late again this morning, and 
came to me crying and praying to be forgiven ; 
but I was determined to make an example of her, 


THE TOWN WITH NOBODY IN IT. 85 

SO I sold her at once to Clink-of-the-Hole, and 
he has just driven her away to work in his 
mine.” 

Jack, on hearing this, whispered to the hound 
at his feet, “ If you will guide me to Clink’s 
hole, you shall be my dog.” 

“ Master, I will do my best,” answered the 
hound ; and he stole softly out of the market, 
Jack following him. 


CHAPTER VII. 


HALF-A-CROWN. 

So useful it is to have money, heigh ho f 
So useful it is to have money ! 

A. H. Clough. 

The old hound went straight through the 
town, smelling Clink’s footsteps, till he came 
into a large field of barley ; and there, sitting 
against a sheaf, for it was harvest time, they 
found Clink-of-the-Hole. He was a very ugly 
little brown man, and he was smoking a pipe 
in the shade ; while crouched near him was the 
poor little woman, with her hands spread be- 
fore her face. 

Good-day, sir,” said Clink to Jack. “ You 
are a stranger here, no doubt ? ” 

“ Yes,” said Jack ; “ I only arrived this 
morning.” 

“ Have you seen the town ? ” asked Clink, 

civilly ; “ there is a verv fine market.” 

86 



Clink-of-the-IIole. 









HALF-A-CROWN. 


87 


“Yes, I have seen the market,” answered 
Jack. “ I went into it to buy a slave, but I 
did not see one that I liked.” 

“ Ah ! ” said Clink ; “ and yet they had some 
very fine articles.” Here he pointed to the 
poor little woman, and said, “How that’s a 
useful body enough, and I had her very 
cheap.” 

“ "What did you give for her ? ” said Jack, 
sitting down. 

“ Three pitchers,” said Clink, “ and fifteen 
cups and saucers, and two shillings in the 
money of the town.” 

“ Is their money like this ? ” said Jack, tak- 
ing out his shilling. 

When Clink saw the shilling he changed 
color, and said, very earnestly, “Where did 
you get that, dear sir ? ” 

“ Oh, it was given me,” said Jack, carelessly. 

Clink looked hard at the shilling, and so did 
the fairy woman, and Jack let them look some 
time, for he amused himself with throwing it 
up several times and catching it. At last he 
put it back in his pocket, and then Clink 


88 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


heaved a deep sigh. Then Jack took out a 
penny, and began to toss that up, upon which, 
to his great surprise, the little brown man fell 
on his knees, and said, “ Oh, a shilling and a 
penny, — a shilling and a penny of mortal coin ! 
What would I not give for a shilling and a 
penny ! ” 

“ I don’t believe you have got anything to 
give,” said Jack, cunningly; “I see nothing 
but that ring on your finger, and the old 
woman.” 

“ But I have a great many things at home, 
sir,” said the brown man, wiping his eyes; 
“and besides, that ring would be cheap at a 
shilling, — even a shilling of mortal coin.” 

“ Would the slave be cheap at a penny ? ” 
said Jack. 

“ Would you give a penny for her, dear sir ? ” 
inquired Clink, trembling with eagerness. 

“ She is honest,” answered Jack ; “ ask her 
whether I had better buy her with this penny.” 

“ It does not matter what she says,” replied 
the brown man ; “ I would sell twenty such as 
she is for a penny, — a real one.” 


HALF-A-CROWN. 


89 


“ Ask her,” repeated Jack ; and the poor 
little woman wept bitterly, but she said, l^^o.” 

“ Why not ? ” asked Jack ; but she only 
hung down her head and cried. 

“ I’ll make you suffer for this,” said the brown 
man. But when Jack took out the shilling, and 
said, “ Shall I buy you with this, slave ? ” his 
eyes actually shot out sparks, he was so eager. 

“ Speak ! ” he said to the fairy woman ; “ and 
if you don’t sa}^ ‘ Yes,’ I’ll strike you.” 

“He cannot buy me with that,” answered 
the fairy woman, “ unless it is the most valu- 
able coin he has got.” 

The brown man, on hearing this, rose up in a 
rage, and was just going to strike her a terrible 
blow, when Jack cried out, “ Stop ! ” and took 
out his half-crown. 

“Can I buy you with this? ’’said he; and 
the fairy woman answered, “ Yes.” 

Upon this Clink drew a long breath, and his 
eyes grew bigger and bigger as he gazed at the 
half-crown. 

“ Shall she be my slave forever, and not 
yours,” said Jack, “ if I give you this ? ” 


90 


mopsa the fairy. 


“ She shall,” said the brown man. And he 
made such a low bow, as he took the money, 
that his head actually knocked the ground. 
Then he jumped up ; and, as if he was afraid 
Jack should repent of his bargain, he ran off 
towards the hole in the hill with all his miglit, 
shouting for joy as he went. 

“ Slave,” said J ack, “ that is a very ragged 
old apron that you have got, and your gown is 
quite worn out. Don’t you think we had better 
spend my shilling in buying you some new 
clothes ? You look so very shabby.” 

“ Do I ? ” said the fairy woman, gently. 
“ Well, master, you will do as you please.” 

“ But you know better than I do,” said Jack, 
‘‘ though you are my slave.” 

“ You had better give me the shilling, then,” 
answered the little old woman ; “ and then 
I advise you to go back to the boat, and wait 
there till I come.” 

“What!” said Jack; “canyon go all the 
way back into the town again ? I think you 
must be tired, for you know you are so very 
old.” 


HALF-A-CROWN. 


91 


The fairy woman laughed when Jack said 
this, and she had such a sweet laugh that he 
loved to hear it ; but she took the shilling, and 
trudged off to the town, aud he went back to 
the boat, his hound running after him. 

He was a long time going, for he ran a good 
many times after butterflies, and then he 
climbed up several trees; and altogether he 
amused himself for such a long while that when 
he reached the boat his fairy woman was there 
before him. So he stepped on board, the hound 
followed, and the boat immediately began to 
swim on. 

“ Why, you have not bought any new 
clothes ! ” said Jack to his slave. 

“ JSTo, master,” answered the fairy woman ; 
“ but I have bought what I wanted.” And she 
took out of her pocket a little tiny piece of 
purple ribbon, with a gold-colored satin edge, 
and a very small tortoise-shell comb. 

When Jack saw these he was vexed, and 
said, 

“ What do you mean by being so silly ? I 
can’t scold you properly, because I don’t know 


92 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


what name to call you by, and I don’t like to 
say ‘ Slave,’ because that sounds so rude. Why, 
this bit of ribbon is such a little bit that it’s of 
no use at all. It’s not large enough even to 
make one mitten of.” 

“ Isn’t it ? ” said the slave. “ Just take hold 
of it, master, and let us see if it will stretch.” 

So Jack did. And she pulled, and he pulled, 
and very soon the silk had stretched till it was 
nearly as large as a handkerchief ; and then 
she shook it, and they pulled again. “ This is 
very good fun,” said Jack ; why now it is as 
large as an apron.” 

So she shook it again, and gave it a twitch 
here, and a pat there ; and then they pulled 
again, and the silk suddenly stretched so wide 
that Jack was very nearly falling overboard. 
So Jack’s slave pulled off her ragged gown and 
apron, and put it on. It was a most beautiful 
robe of purple silk ; it had a gold border, and 
it just fitted her. 

“ That will do,” she said. And then she took 
out the little tortoise-shell comb, pulled off her 
cap, and threw it into the river. She had a 


HALF-A-CROWN. 


93 


little knot of soft, gray hair, and she let it 
down, and began to comb. And as she combed 
the hair got much longer and thicker, till it fell 
in waves all about her throat. Then she 
combed again, and it all turned gold-color, and 
came tumbling down to her waist ; and then she 
stood up in the boat, and combed once more, 
and shook out the hair, and there was such a 
quantity that it reached down to her feet, and 
she was so covered with it that you could not 
see one bit of her, excepting her eyes, which 
peeped out and looked bright and full of 
tears. 

Then she began to gather up her lovely 
locks ; and when she had dried her eyes with 
them, she said, “ Master, do you know what 
you have done? look at me now!” So she 
threw back the hair from her face, and it was 
a beautiful young face; and she looked so 
happy that Jack was glad he had bought her 
with his half-crown, — so glad that he could not 
help crying, and the fair slave cried too ; and 
then instantly the little fairies woke, and sprang 
out of Jack’s pockets. As they did so, Jo- 


94 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


vinian cried out, “ Madam, I am your most 
humble servant ” ; and Eoxaletta said, “ I hope 
your Grace is well ” ; hut the third got on 
Jack’s knee, and took hold of the buttons of 
his waistcoat, and when the lovely slave looked 
at her, she hid her face and blushed with pretty 
childish shyness. 

“ These are fairies,” said Jack’s slave ; “ but 
what are you ? ” 

“ Jack kissed me,” said the little thing ; “ and 
I want to sit on his knee.” 

“ Yes,” said Jack ; “ I took them out, and 
laid them in a row, to see that they were safe, 
and this one I kissed, because she looked such 
a little dear.” 

“ Was she not like the others, then ? ” asked 
the slave. 

“ Yes,” said Jack ; “ but I liked her the best ; 
she was my favorite.” 

Now, the instant these three fairies sprang 
out of Jack’s pockets, they got very much 
larger ; in fact, they became fully grown, — 
that is to say, they measured exactly one foot 
one inch in height, which, as most people 


HALF-A-CROWN. 


95 


know, is exactly the proper height for fairies of 
that tribe. The two who had sprung out first 
were very beautifully dressed. One had a 
green velvet coat, and a sword, the hilt of 
which was incrusted with diamonds. The 
second had a white spangled robe, and the love- 
liest rubies and emeralds round her neck and in 
her hair ; but the third, the one who sat on 
Jack’s knee, had a white frock and a blue sash 
on. She had soft, fat arms, and a face just like 
that of a sweet little child. 

When Jack’s slave saw this, she took the 
little creature on her knee, and said to her, 
“How comes it that you are not like your 
companions ? ” 

And she answered, in a pretty lisping voice, 
“ It’s because Jack kissed me.” 

“ Even so it must be,” answered the slave ; 

the love of a mortal works changes indeed. 
It is not often that we win anything so pre- 
cious. Here, master, let her sit on your knee 
sometimes, and take care of her, for she cannot 
now take the same care of herself that others 
of her race are capable of.” 


96 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


So Jack let little Mopsa sit on his knee ; and 
when he was tired of admiring his slave, and 
wondering at the respect with which the other 
two fairies treated her, and at their cleverness 
in getting water-lilies for her, and fanning her 
with feathers, he curled himself up in the bot- 
tom of the boat with his own little favorite, and 
taught her how to play at cat’s-cradle. 

When they had been playing some time, and 
Mopsa was getting quite clever at the game, 
the lovely slave said, “ Master, it is a long time 
since you spoke to me.” 

“ And yet,” said Jack, “ there is something 
that I particularly want to ask you about.” 

“ Ask it then,” she replied. 

“I don’t like to have a slave,” answered 
Jack; “and as you are so clever, don’t you 
think you can find out how to be free again ? ” 

“ I am very glad you asked me about that,” 
said the fairy woman. “ Yes, master, I wish 
very much to be free ; and as you were so kind 
as to give the most valuable piece of real money 
you possessed in order to buy me, I can be free 
if you can think of anything that you really 


HALF-A-CROWN. 97 

like better than that half-crown, and if I can 
give it you.” 

“ Oh, there are many things,” said Jack. “ I 
like going up this river to Fairyland much 
better.” 

“ But you are going there, master,” said the 
fairy woman ; “ you were on the way before I 
met with you.” 

I like this little child better,” said Jack ; 
“ I love this little Mopsa. I should like her 
to belong to me.” 

“ She is yours,” answered the fairy woman ; 
‘‘ she belongs to you already. Think of some- 
thing else.” 

Jack thought again, and was so long about 
it that at last the beautiful slave said to him, 
“ Master, do you see those purple mountains ? ” 

Jack turned round in the boat, and saw a 
splendid range of purple mountains, going up 
and up. They were very great and steep, each 
had a crown of snow, and the sky was very 
red behind them, for the sun was going down. 

“ At the other side of those mountains is 
Fairyland,” said the slave ; “ but if you cannot 
7 


98 


MOPSA THE PAIHY. 


think of something that you should like better 
to have than your half-crown, I can never enter 
in. The river flows straight up to yonder steep 
precipice, and there is a chasm in it which 
pierces it, and through which the river runs 
down beneath, among the very roots of the 
mountains, till it comes out at the other side. 
Thousands and thousands of the small people 
will come when they see the boat, each with a 
silken thread in his hand ; but if there is a 
slave in it, not all their strength and skill can 
tow it through. Look at those rafts on the 
river; on them are the small people coming 
up.” 

“Jack looked, and saw that the river was 
spotted with rafts, on which were crowded 
brown fairy sailors, each one with three green 
stripes on his sleeve, which looked like good 
conduct marks. All these sailors were chat- 
tering very fast, and the rafts were coming 
down to meet the boat. 

“ All these sailors to tow my slave ! ” said 
Jack. “ I wonder, I do wonder, what you 
are ? ” But the fairy woman only smiled, and 


HALF-A-CROWN. 


99 


J ack went on : “I have thought of something 
that I should like much better than my half- 
crown. I should like to have a little tiny bit 
of that purple gown of yours with the gold 
border.” 

Then the fairy woman said, “ I thank you, 
master. iN’ow I can be free.” So she told 
Jack to lend her his knife, and with it she cut 
off a very small piece of the skirt of her robe, 
and gave it to him. “ Now mind,” she said, 
“ I advise you never to stretch this unless you 
want to make some particular thing of it, for 
then it will only stretch to the right size ; but 
if you merely begin to pull it for your own 
amusement, it will go on stretching and stretch- 
ing, and I don’t know where it will stop.” 


C. 


CHAPTEK YIII. 


A STOEY. 

In the night she told a story, 

In the night and all night through, 

While the moon was in her glory, 

And the branches dropped with dew. 

’Twas my life she told, and round it 
Rose the years as from a deep ; 

In the world’s great heart she found it, 

Cradled like a child asleep. 

In the night I saw her weaving 
By the misty moonbeam cold. 

All the weft her shuttle cleaving 
With a sacred thread of gold. 

Ah I she wept me tears of sorrow. 

Lulling tears so mystic sweet ; 

Then she wove my last to-morrow, 

And her web lay at my feet. 

Of my life she made the story : 

I must weep— so soon ’twas told I 

But your name did lend it glory. 

And your love its thread of gold I 

By this time, as the sun had gone down, and 

none of the moons had risen, it would have 

100 


A STORY. 


101 


been dark but that each of the rafts was rigged 
with a small mast that had a lantern hung to it. 

By the light of these lanterns Jack saw 
crowds of little brown faces ; and presently 
many rafts had come up to the boat, which 
was now swimming very slowly. Every sailor 
in every raft fastened to the boat’s side a silken 
thread ; then the rafts were rowed to shore, 
and the sailors jumped out, and began to tow 
the boat along. 

These crimson threads looked no stronger 
than the silk that ladies sew with, yet by means 
of them the small people drew the boat along 
merrily. There were so many of them that 
they looked like an army as they marched in 
the light of the lanterns and torches. Jack 
thought they were very happy, though the 
work was hard, for they shouted and sang. 

The fairy woman looked more beautiful than 
ever now, and far more stately. She had on a 
band of precious stones to bind back her hair, 
and they shone so brightly in the night that 
her features could be clearly seen. 

Jack’s little favorite was fast asleep, and the 


102 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


other two fairies had flown away. He was 
beginning to feel rather sleepy himself, when 
he was roused by the voice of his free lady, 
who said to him, “Jack, there is no one listen- 
ing now, so I will tell you my story. I am the 
Fairy Queen 1 ” 

Jack opened his eyes very wide, but he was 
so much surprised that he did not say a word. 

“ One day, long, long ago,” said the Queen, 
“I was discontented with my own happy 
country. I wished to see the world, so I set 
forth with a number of the one-foot-one fairies, 
and went down the wonderful river, thinking 
to see the world. 

“ So we sailed down the river till we came to 
that town which you know of ; and there, in 
the very middle of the stream, stood a tower, 
— a tall tower, built upon a rock. 

“Fairies are afraid of nothing but other 
fairies, and we did not think this tower was 
fairy-work, so we left our ship and went up 
the rock and into the tower, to see what it was 
like; but just as we had descended into the 
dungeon keep, we heard the gurgling of water 


A STORY. 


103 


overhead, and down came the tower. It was 
nothing but water enchanted into the likeness 
of stone, and we all fell down with it into the 
very bed of the river. 

“ Of course we were not drowned, but there 
we were obliged to lie, for we have no power 
out of our own element ; and the next day the 
towns-people came down with a net and 
dragged the river, picked us all out of the 
meshes, and made us slaves. The one-foot-one 
fairies got away shortly ; but from that day to 
this, in sorrow and distress, I have had to serve 
my masters. Luckily, my crown had fallen off 
in the water, so I was not known to be the 
Queen ; but till you came. Jack, I had almost 
forgotten that I had ever been happy and free, 
and I had hardly any hope of getting away.” 

“ How sorry your people must have been,” 
said Jack, “ when they found you did not come 
home again.” 

“ Ho,” said the Queen ; “ they only went to 
sleep, and they will not wake till to-morrow 
morning, when I pass in again. They will 
think I have been absent for a day, and so will 


104 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


the apple- woman. You must not undeceive 
them ; if you do, they will be very angry.” 

“And who is the apple- woman ? ” inquired 
Jack; but the Queen blushed, and pretended 
not to hear the question, so he repeated, — 

“ Queen, who is the apple- woman ? ” 

“ I’ve only had her for a very little while,” 
said the Queen, evasively. 

“ And how long do you think you have been 
a slave. Queen ? ” asked Jack. 

“ I don’t know,” said the Queen. “ I have 
never been able to make up my mind about 
that.” 

And now all the moons began to shine, and 
all the trees lighted themselves up, for almost 
every leaf had a glowworm or a fire-fly on it, 
and the water was full of fishes that had shin- 
ing eyes. And now they were close to the 
steep mountain side ; and Jack looked and saw 
an opening in it, into which the river ran. It 
was a kind of cave, something like a long, long 
church with a vaulted roof, only the pavement 
of it was that magic river, and a narrow tow- 
ing-path ran on either side. 


A STORY. 


105 


As they entered the cave there was a hollow, 
murmuring sound, and the Queen’s crown be- 
came so bright that it lighted up the whole 
boat ; at the same time she began to tell Jack 
a wonderful story, which he liked very much to 
hear, but every fresh thing she said he forgot 
what had gone before ; and at last, though he 
tried very hard to listen, he was obliged to go 
to sleep ; and he slept soundly, and never 
dreamed of anything, till it was morning. 

He saw such a curious sight when he woke ! 
They had been going through this underground 
cavern all night, and now they were approach- 
ing its opening on the other side. This open- 
ing, because they were a good way from it yet, 
looked like a lovely little round window of blue 
and yellow and green glass, but as they drew on 
he could see far-off mountains, blue sky, and a 
country aU covered with sunshine. 

He heard singing, too, such as fairies make ; 
and he saw some beautiful people, such as 
those fairies whom he had brought with him. 
They were coming along the towing-path. 
They were all lady fairies ; but they were not 


106 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


very polite, for as each one came up she took 
a silken rope out of a brown sailor’s hand, and 
gave him a shove which pushed him into 
the water. In fact, the water became filled 
with such swarms of these sailors that the boat 
could hardly get on. But the poor little brown 
fellows did not seem to mind this conduct, for 
they plunged and shook themselves about, 
scattering a good deal of spray. Then they 
all suddenly dived, and when they came up 
again they were ducks, — nothing but brown 
ducks, I assure you, with green stripes on their 
wings ; and with a great deal of quacking and 
fioundering, they all began to swim back again 
as fast as they could. 

Then J ack was a good deal vexed, and he 
said to himself, “ If nobody thanks the ducks 
for towing us I will ” ; so he stood up in the 
boat and shouted, ‘‘ Thank you, ducks ; we are 
very much obliged to you ! ” But neither the 
Queen nor these new towers took the least 
notice, and gradually the boat came out of that 
dim cave and entered Fairyland, while the 
river became so narrow that you could hear 


A STORY. 


107 


the song of the towers quite easily ; those on 
the right bank sang the first verse, and those 
on the left bank answered : — 

Drop, drop from the leaves of lign aloes, 

O honey-dew I drop from the tree. 

Float up through your clear river shallows, 

White lilies, beloved of the bee. 

Let the people, O Queen ! say, and bless thee, 

Her bounty drops soft as the dew. 

And spotless in honor confess thee. 

As lilies are spotless in hue. 

On the roof stands yon white stork awaking. 

His feathers flush rosy the while. 

For, lo ! from the blushing east breaking. 

The sun sheds the bloom of his smile. 

Let them boast of thy word, “ It is certain ; 

We doubt it no more,” let them say, 

“ Than to-morrow that night’s dusky curtain 
Shall roll back its folds for the day.” 

“Master,’’ whispered the old hound, who 
was lying at Jack’s feet. 

“ Well,” said Jack. 

“ They didn’t invent that song themselves,” 
said the hound ; “ the old apple- woman taught 
it to them, — the woman whom they love be- 
cause she can make them cry.” 


108 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


Jack was rather ashamed of the hound’s 
rudeness in saying this ; but the Queen took 
no notice. And now they had reached a little 
landing-place, which ran out a few feet into 
the river, and was strewed thickly with cow- 
slips and violets. 

Here the boat stopped, and the Queen rose 
and got out. 

Jack watched her. A whole crowd of one- 
foot-one fairies came down a garden to meet 
her, and he saw them conduct her to a beautiful 
tent, with golden poles and a silken covering ; 
but nobody took the slightest notice of him, or 
of little Mopsa, or of the hound, and after a 
long silence the hound said, “ Well, master, 
don’t you feel hungry ? Why don’t you go 
with the others and have some breakfast ? ” 

“ The Queen didn’t invite me,” said Jack. 

‘‘But do you feel as if you couldn’t go?” 
asked the hound. 

“ Of course not,” answered Jack ^ “ but per- 
haps I may not.” 

“ Oh, yes, master,” replied the hound ; “ what- 
ever you can do in Fairyland you may do.” 


A STORY. 


109 


“ Are you sure of that? ” asked Jack. 

“ Quite sure, master,” said the hound ; “ and 
I am hungry too.” 

“ Well,” said Jack, “ I will go there and take 
Mopsa. She shall ride on my shoulder ; you 
may follow.” 

So he walked up that beautiful garden till he 
came to the great tent. A banquet was going 
on inside. All the one-foot-one fairies sat down 
the sides of a table, and at the top sat the 
Queen on a larger chair ; and there were two 
empty chairs, one on each side of her. 

Jack blushed ; but the hound whispering again, 
“ Master, whatever you can do you may do,” 
he came slowly up the table towards the Queen, 
who was saying, as he drew near, “ Where is 
our trusty and well-beloved, the apple-woman ? ” 
And she took no notice of Jack ; so, though he 
could not help feeling rather red and ashamed, 
he went and sat in the chair beside her with 
Mopsa still on his shoulder. Mopsa laughed 
for joy when she saw the feast. The Queen 
said, “ O Jack, I am so glad to see you ! ” and 
some of the one-foot-one fairies cried out, 


110 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


“ What a delightful little creature that is ! She 
can laugh ! Perhaps she can also cry ! ” 

Jack looked about, but there was no seat for 
Mopsa ; and he was afraid to let her run about 
on the floor, lest she should be hurt. 

There was a very large dish standing before 
the Queen ; for though the people were small, 
the plates and dishes were exactly like those 
we use, and of the same size. 

This dish was raised on a foot, and filled with 
grapes and peaches. Jack wondered at himself 
for doing it, but he saw no other place for 
Mopsa ; so he took out the fruit, laid it round 
the dish, and set his own little one-foot-one in 
the dish. 

Nobody looked in the least surprised ; and 
there she sat very happily, biting an apple with 
her small white teeth. 

Then, as they brought him nothing to eat, 
Jack helped himself from some of the dishes 
before him, and found that a fairy breakfast 
was very nice indeed. 

In the meantime there was a noise outside, 
and in stumped an elderly woman. She had 


A STORY. 


Ill 


very thick boots on, a short gown of red print, an 
orange cotton handkerchief over her shoulders^ 
and a black silk bonnet. She was exactly th^? 
same height as the Queen, — for of course no' 
body in Fairyland is allowed to be any bigger 
than the Queen ; so, if they are not children 
when they arrive, they are obliged to shrink. 

“ How are you, dear? ” said the Queen. 

“ I am as well as can be expected,” answered 
the apple-woman, sitting down in the empty 
chair. “ How, then, where’s my tea ? They’re 
never ready with my cup of tea.” 

Two attendants immediately brought a cup 
of tea, and set it down before the apple- woman, 
with a plate of bread and butter ; and she pro- 
ceeded to pour it into the saucer, and blow it, 
because it was hot. In so doing her wandering 
eyes caught sight of Jack and little Mopsa, and 
she set down the saucer, and looked at them 
with attention. 

How Mopsa, I am sorry to say, was behaving 
so badly that Jack was quite ashamed of her. 
First, she got out of her dish, took something 
nice out of the Queen’s plate with her fingers. 


112 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


and ate it ; and then, as she was going back, 
she tumbled over a melon, and upset a glass of 
red wine, which she wiped up with her white 
frock ; after which she got into her dish again, 
and there she sat smiling, and daubing her 
pretty face with a piece of buttered mufl&n. 

“ Mopsa,” said Jack, “ you are very naughty ; 
if you behave in this way, I shall never take 
you out to parties again.” 

“ Pretty lamb ! ” said the apple- woman ; “ it’s 
just like a child.” And then she burst into 
tears, and exclaimed, sobbing, “It’s many a 
long day since I’ve seen a child. Oh dear ! oh 
deary me ! ” 

Upon this, to the astonishment of Jack, every 
one of the guests began to cry and sob too. 

“Oh dear! oh dear!” they said to one 
another, “ we’re crying ; we can cry just as well 
as men and women. Isn’t it delightful ? What 
a luxury it is to cry, to be sure ! ” 

They were evidently quite proud of it ; and 
when Jack looked at the Queen for an expla- 
nation, she only gave him a still little smile. 

But Mopsa crept along the table to the apple- 


A STORY. 


113 


woman, let her take her and hug her, and 
seemed to like her very much ; for as she sat 
on her knee, she patted her brown face with a 
little dimpled hand. 

“ I should like vastly well to be her nurse,” 
said the apple-woman, drying her eyes, and 
looking at Jack. 

“ If you’ll always wash her, and put clean 
frocks on her, you may,” said Jack; “for just 
look at her, — what a figure she is already ! ” 

Upon this the apple- woman laughed for joy, 
and again every one else did the same. The 
fairies can only laugh and cry when they see 

mortals do so. 

8 


CHAPTEK IX. 


AFTER THE PARTY. 

Stephana . — This will prove a brave kingdom to me, 

Where I shall have my music for nothing. 

The Tempest. 

When breakfast was over, the guests got up, 
one after the other, without taking the least 
notice of the Queen ; and the tent began to get 
so thin and transparent that you could see the 
trees and the sky through it. At last, it 
looked only like a colored mist, with blue, and 
green, and yellow stripes, and then it was gone ; 
and the table and all the things on it began to 
go in the same way. Only Jack, and the 
apple-woman, and Mopsa were left, sitting on 
their chairs, with the Queen between them. 

Presently, the Queen’s lips began to move, 
and her eyes looked straight before her, as she 
sat upright in her chair. Whereupon the 
apple-woman snatched up Mopsa, and, seiz- 
ing Jack’s hand, hurried him off, exclaiming, 
114 


AFTER THE PARTY. 


115 


“ Come away ! come away ! She is going to 
tell one of her stories ; and if you listen, you’ll 
be obliged to go to sleep, and sleep nobody 
knows how long.” 

Jack did not want to go to sleep ; he wished 
to go down to the riyer again, and see what had 
become of his boat, for he had left his cap and 
several other things in it. 

So he parted from the apple-woman, — who 
took Mopsa with her, and said he would find 
her again when he wanted her at her apple- 
stall, — and went down to the boat, where he 
saw that his faithful hound was there before 
him. 

“ It was lucky, master, that I came when I 
did,” said the hound, “ for a dozen or so of those 
one-foot-one fellows were just shoving it off, 
and you will want it at night to sleep in.” 

“ Yes,” said Jack ; “ and I can stretch the bit 
of purple silk to make a canopy overhead, — a 
sort of awning, — for I should not like to sleep 
in tents or palaces that are inclined to melt 
away.” 

So the hound with his teeth, and J ack with 


116 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


his hands, pulled and pulled at the silk till it 
was large enough to make a splendid canopy, 
like a tent ; and it reached down to the water’s 
edge, and roofed in all the after part of the 
boat. 

So now he had a delightful little home of his 
own ; and there was no fear of its being blown 
away, for no wind ever blows in Fairyland. 
All the trees are quite still, no leaf rustles, and 
the flowers lie on the ground exactly where 
they fall. 

After this Jack told the hound to watch his 
boat, and went himself in search of the apple- 
woman. Not one fairy was to be seen, any 
more than if he had been in his own country, 
and he wandered down the green margin of 
the river till he saw the apple- woman sitting at 
a small stall with apples on it, and cherries tied 
to sticks, and some dry-looking nuts. She had 
Mopsa on her knee, and had washed her face, 
and put a beautiful clean white frock on her. 

“ Where are all the fairies gone to ? ” asked 
Jack. 

“ I never take any notice of that common 


AFTER THE PARTY. 


117 


trash and their doings,” she answered. “ When 
the Queen takes to telling her stories they are 
generally frightened, and go and sit in the tops 
of the trees.” 

“ But you seem very fond of Mopsa,” said 
Jack, “ and she is one of them. You will help 
me to take care of her, won’t you, till she grows 
a little older ? ” 

“ Grows ! ” said the apple- woman, laughing. 
“ Grows ! Why you don’t think, surely, that 
she will ever be any different from what she 
is now?” 

“ I thought she would grow up,” said Jack. 

“ They never change so long as they last,” 
answered the apple-woman, “ when once they 
are one-foot-one high.” 

“Mopsa,” said Jack, “come here, and I’ll 
measure you.” 

Mopsa came dancing towards Jack, and he 
tried to measure her, first with a yard measure 
that the apple- woman took out of her pocket, 
and then with a stick, and then with a bit of 
string ; but Mopsa would not stand steady, and 
at last it ended in their having a good game 


118 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


of romps together, and a race ; but when he 
carried her back, sitting on his shoulder, he 
was sorry to see that the apple- woman was cry- 
ing again, and he asked her kindly what she 
did it for. 

“ It is because,” she answered, “I shall never 
see my own country any more, nor any men 
and women and children, excepting such as by 
a rare chance stray in for a little while as you 
have done.” 

“ I can go back whenever I please,” said 
Jack. “ Why don’t you ? ” 

Because I came in of my own good-will, 
after I had had fair warning that if I came at 
all it would end in my staying always. Be- 
sides, I don’t know that I exactly wish to go 
home again : I should be afraid.” 

“ Afraid of what ? ” asked Jack. 

« Why, there’s the rain and the cold, and not 
having anything to eat excepting what you 
earn. And yet,” said the apple- woman, “I 
have three boys of my own at home ; one of 
them must be nearly a man by this time, and 
the youngest is about as old as you are. If I 


AFTER THE PARTY. 


119 


went home I might find one or more of those 
boys in jail, and then how miserable I should 
be.” 

“ But you are not happy as it is,” said Jack. 
“ I have seen you cry.” 

“ Yes,” said the apple- woman ; “ but now I 
live here I don’t care about anything so much 
as I used to do. ‘ May I have a satin gown 
and a coach?’ 1 asked, when first I came. 
‘You may have a hundred and fifty satin 
gowns if you like,’ said the Queen, ‘ and twenty 
coaches with six cream-colored horses to each.’ 
But when I had been here a little time, and 
found I could have everything I wished for, 
and change it as often as I pleased, I began not 
to care for anything ; and at last I got so sick 
of all their grand things that I dressed myself 
in my own clothes that I came in, and made up 
my mind to have a stall and sit at it, as I used 
to do, selling apples. And I used to say to my- 
self, ‘ I have but to wish with all my heart to 
go home, and I can go, I know that ; ’ but oh 
dear ! oh dear ! I couldn’t wish enough, for it 
would come into my head that I should be poor, 


120 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


or that my boys would have forgotten me, or 
that my neighbors would look down on me, 
and so I always put off wishing for another 
day. Now here is the Queen coming. Sit 
down on the grass and play with Mopsa. 
Don’t let her see us talking together, lest she 
should think I have been telling you things 
which you ought not to know.” 

Jack looked, and saw the Queen coming 
slowly towards them, with her hands held out 
before her, as if it was dark. She felt her way, 
yet her eyes were wide open, and she was tell- 
ing her stories all the time. 

“ Don’t you listen to a word she says,” whis- 
pered the apple- woman ; and then, in order that 
Jack might not hear what the Queen was talk- 
ing about, she began to sing. 

She had no sooner begun than up from the 
river came swarms of one-foot-one fairies to 
listen, and hundreds of them dropped down 
from the trees. The Queen, too, seemed to at- 
tend as they did, though she kept murmuring 
her story all the time ; and nothing that any of 
them did appeared to surprise the apple-woman, 


AFTER THE PARTY. 121 

— she sang as if nobody was taking any notice 
at all : — 

When I sit on market-days amid the comers and the 
goers, 

Oh ! full oft I have a vision of the days without alloy, 

And a ship comes up the river with a jolly gang of 
towers. 

And a “ pull’e haul’e, pull’e haul’e, yoy ! heave, hoy ! ’’ 

There is busy talk around me, all about mine ears it 
hummeth, 

But the wooden wharves I look on, and a dancing, 
heaving buoy. 

For ’tis tidetime in the river, and she cometh — oh, she 
cometh ! 

With a “puH’e haul’e, pull’e haul’e, yoy! heave, 
hoy ! ” 

Then I hear the water washing, never golden waves 
were brighter. 

And I hear the capstan creaking — ’tis a sound that 
cannot cloy. 

Bring her to, to ship her lading, brig or schooner, 
sloop or lighter. 

With a “ pull’e haul’e, pull’e haul’e, yoy I heave hoy 1 ” 

“ Will ye step aboard, my dearest ? for the high seas lie 
before us.” 

So I sailed adown the river in those days without 
alloy. 

We are launched I But when, I wonder, shall a sweeter 
sound float o’er us 

Than yon “pull’e haul’e, pull’e haul’e, yoy! heave, 
hoy I ” 


132 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


As the apple-woman left off singing, the 
Queen moved away, still murmuring the words 
of her story, and J ack said, — 

“Does the Queen tell stories of what has 
happened, or of what is going to happen ? ” 

“ Why, of what is going to happen, of course,’’ 
replied the woman. “ Anybody could tell the 
other sort.” 

“ Because I heard a little of it,” observed 
Jack. “ I thought she was talking of me. She 
said, ‘ So he took the measure, and Mopsa stood 
still for once, and he found she was only one 
foot high, and she grew a great deal after that. 
Yes, she can grow.’ ” 

“ That’s a fine hearing, and a strange hear- 
ing,” said the apple-woman ; “ and what did she 
mutter next ? ” 

“ Of how she heard me sobbing,” replied 
Jack; “ and while you went on about stepping 
on board the ship, she said, ‘ He was very good 
to me, dear little fellow ! But Fate is the name 
of my old mother, and she reigns here. Oh, 
she reigns ! The fatal F is in her name, and I 
cannot take it out ! ’ ” 


AFTER THE PARTY. 


123 


“ Ah ! ” replied the apple-woman, “ they all 
say that, and that they are fays, and that 
mortals call their history fable ; they are always 
crying out for an alphabet without the fatal F.” 

“ And then she told how she heard Mopsa 
sobbing too,’’ said Jack ; “ sobbing among the 
reeds and rushes by the river side.” 

“ There are no reeds, and no rushes either, 
here,” said the apple-woman, “ and I have walked 
the river from end to end. I don’t think much of 
that part of the story. But you are sure she 
said that Mopsa was short of her proper height ? ” 
“ Yes, and that she would grow ; but that’s 
nothing. In my country we always grow.” 

“ Hold your tongue about your country ! ” 
said the apple-woman, sharply. “ Do you 
want to make enemies of them all ? ” 

Mopsa had been listening to this, and now 
she said, “ I don’t love the Queen. She slapped 
my arm as she went by, and it hurts.” 

Mopsa showed her little fat arm as she 
spoke, and there was a red place on it. 

“ That’s odd, too,” said the apple- woman ; 
“there’s nothing red in a common fairy’s 


124 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


veins. They have sap in them : that’s why 
they can’t blush.” 

Just then the sun went down, and Mopsa got 
up on the apple- woman’s lap, and went to 
sleep ; and Jack, being tired, went to his boat 
,and lay down under the purple canopy, his old 
hound lying at his feet to keep guard over him. 

The next morning, when he woke, a pretty 
voice called to him, “ Jack ! Jack ! ” and he 
opened his eyes and saw Mopsa. The apple- 
woman had dressed her in a clean frock and 
blue shoes, and her hair was so long ! She was 
standing on the landing-place, close to him. 

O Jack ! I’m so big,” she said. “ I grew in 
the night ; look at me.” 

Jack looked. Y es, Mopsa had grown indeed ; 
she had only just reached to his knee the day 
before, and now her little bright head, when he 
measured her, came as high as the second but- 
ton of his waistcoat. 

“ But I hope you will not go on growing so 
fast as this,” said Jack, “ or you will be as tall 
as my mamma is in a week or two, — much too 
big for me to play with.” 


CHAPTEE X. 


MOPSA LEARNS HER LETTERS. 

A apple-pie. 

B bit it. 

How ashamed I am,” Jack said, “to think 
that you don’t know even your letters ! ” 

Mopsa replied that she thought that did not 
signify, and then she and Jack began to play 
at jumping from the boat on to the bank, and 
back again ; and afterwards, as not a single 
fairy could be seen, they had breakfast with the 
apple-woman. 

“ Where is the Queen ?” asked Jack. 

The apple-woman answered, “It’s not the 
fashion to ask questions in Fairyland.” 

“ That’s a pity,” said Jack, “ for there are 
several things that I particularly want to know 
about this country. Mayn’t I even ask how 
big it is ? ” 

“ How big ? ” said Mopsa, — little Mopsa look- 

125 


126 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


ing as wise as possible. “ Why, the same size 
as your world, of course.” 

Jack laughed. “ It’s the same world that 
you call 3"ours,” continued Mopsa ; “ and when 
I’m a little older, I’ll explain it all to you.” 

“ If it’s our world,” said Jack, “ why are 
none of us in it, excepting me and the apple- 
woman ? ” 

‘‘ That’s because you’ve got something in your 
world that you call Time,” said Mopsa ; “ so you 
talk about now, and you talk about then.” 

“ And don’t you ?” asked Jack. 

“ I do if I want to make you understand,” 
said Mopsa. 

The apple-woman laughed, and said, “To 
think of the pretty thing talking so queen-like 
already ! Yes, that’s right, and just what the 
grown-up fairies say. Go on, and explain it to 
him if you can.” 

“ You know,” said Mopsa, “ that your people 
say there was a time when there were none of 
them in the world, — a time before they were 
made. Well, this is that time. This is long ago 
ago. 


MOPSA LEARNS HER LETTERS. 127 

“ ^N’onsense ! ” said Jack. “ Then how do I 
happen to be here ? ” 

“ Because,” said Mopsa, “ when the albatross 
brought you, she did not fly with you a long 
way off, but a long way back, — hundreds and 
hundreds of years. This is your world, as you 
can see ; but none of your people are here, be- 
cause they are not made yet. I don’t think any 
of them will be made for a thousand years.” 

“ But I saw the old ships,” answered Jack, 
“ in the enchanted bay.” 

“ That was a border country,” said Mopsa. 
“ I was asleep while you went through those 
countries ; but these are the real Fairylands.” 

Jack was very much surprised when he heard 
Mopsa say these strange things ; and as he looked 
at her, he felt that a sleep was coming over 
him, and he could not hold up his head. He 
felt how delightful it was to go to sleep ; and 
though the apple-woman sprang to him, when 
she observed that he was shutting his eyes, and 
though he heard her begging and entreating him 
to keep awake, he did not want to do so ; but he 
let his head sink down on the mossy grass, which 


128 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


was as soft as a pillow, and there, under the 
shade of a Guelder rose-tree, that kept dropping 
its white flowerets all over him, he had this 
dream : 

He thought that Mopsa came running up to 
him, as he stood by the river, and that he said 
to her, “Oh, Mopsa, how old we are! We 
have lived back to the times before Adam and 
Eve!” 

“Yes,” said Mopsa ;“ but I don’t feel old. 
Let us go down the river, and see what we can 
find.” 

So they got into the boat, and it floated into 
the middle of the river, and then made for the 
opposite bank, where the water was warm and 
very muddy, and the river became so very wide 
that it seemed to be afternoon when they got 
near enough to see it clearly ; and what they 
saw was a boggy country, green, and full of 
little rills ; but the water, — which, as I told you, 
was thick and muddy, — the water was full of 
small holes ! You never saw water with eyelet- 
holes in it; but Jack did. On all sides of the 
boat he saw holes moving about in pairs, and 


MOPSA LEARNS HER LETTERS. 120 

some were so close that he looked and saw their 
lining : they were lined with pink, and thej^' 
snorted ! Jack was afraid, but he considered 
that this was such a long time ago that the 
holes, whatever they were, could not hurt him ; 
but it made him start, notwithstanding, when a 
huge flat-head reared itself up close to the boat, 
and he found that the holes were the nostrils 
of creatures who kept all the rest of themselves 
under water. 

In a minute or two, hundreds of ugly flat- 
heads popped up, and the boat danced among 
them as they floundered about in the water. 

“ I hope they won’t upset us,” said Jack. 
“ I wish you would land.” 

Mopsa said she would rather not, because she 
did not like the hairy elephants. 

“ There are no such things as hairy elephants,” 
said Jack, in his dream; but he had hardly 
spoken when out of a wood close at hand some 
huge creatures, far larger than our elephants, 
came jogging down to the water. There were 
forty or fifty of them, and they were covered 
with what looked like tow. In fact, so coarse 
9 


130 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


was their shaggy hair that they looked as if 
they were dressed in door-mats ; and when they 
stood still and shook themselves, such clouds of 
dust flew out that, as it swept over the river, it 
almost stifled Jack and Mopsa. 

“ Odious ! ” exclaimed Jack, sneezing. “ What 
terrible creatures these are ! ” 

“ Well,” answered Mopsa, at the other end of 
the boat (but he could hardly see her for the 
dust), “ then why do you dream of .them ? ” 
Jack had just decided to dream of something 
else, when, with a noise greater than fifty trum- 
pets, the elephants, having shaken out all the 
dust, came thundering down to the water to 
bathe in the liquid mud. They shook the whole 
country as they plunged ; but that was not all. 
The awful river-horses rose up, and, with shrill 
screams, fell upon them, and gave them battle ; 
while up from every rill peeped above the 
rushes frogs as large as oxen, and with blue and 
green eyes that gleamed like the eyes of cats. 

The frogs croaking, and the shrill trumpeting 
of the elephants, together with the cries of the 
river-horses, as all these creatures fought with 


MOPSA LEARNS HER LETTERS. 131 

horn and tusk, and fell on one another, lashing 
the water into whirlpools, among which the boat 
danced up and down like a cork, — the blinding 
spray, and the flapping about of great bats over 
the boat and in it, — so confused Jack, that 
Mopsa had spoken to him several times before 
he answered. 

“ O Jack ! ” she said, at last ; “ if you can’t 
dream any better, I must call the Craken.” 

“ Very well,” said Jack. “ I’m almost wrapped 
up and smothered in bats’ wings, so call any- 
thing you please.” 

Thereupon Mopsa whistled softly, and in a 
minute or two he saw, almost spanning the river 
a hundred yards off, a thing like a rainbow, or 
a slender bridge, or still more, like one ring or 
coil of an enormous serpent ; and presently the 
creature’s head shot up like a fountain, close 
to the boat, almost as high as a ship’s mast. 
It was the Craken ; and when Mopsa saw it, she 
began to cry, and said, “ We are caught in this 
crowd of creatures, and we cannot get away 
from the land of dreams. Do help us, Craken !” 

Some of the bats that hung to the edges of 


132 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


the boat had wings as large as sails ; and the 
first thing the Craken did was to stoop its lithe 
neck, pick two or three of them off, and eat them. 

“ You can swim your boat home under my 
coils where the water is calm,” the Craken said, 
“ for she is so extremely old now, that if you do 
not take care she will drop to pieces before you 
get back to the present time.” 

Jack knew it was of no use saying anything 
to this formidable creature, before whom the 
river-horses and the elephants were rushing to 
the shore ; but when he looked and saw down 
the river rainbow behind rainbow, — I mean coil 
behind coil, — glittering in the sun, like so many 
glorious arches that did not reach to the banks, 
he felt extremely glad that this was a dream, and 
besides that, he thought to himself, “ It’s only a 
fabled monster.” 

“ No, it’s only a fable to these times,” said 
Mopsa, answering his thought ; ‘‘ but in spite 
of that we shall have to go through all the 
rings.” 

They went under one, — silver, green, and 
blue, and gold. The water dripped from it up- 


MOPS A LEARNS HER LETTERS. 133 

on them, and the boat trembled, either because 
of its great age, or because it felt the rest of the 
coil underneath. 

A good way off was another coil, and they 
went so safely under that, that Jack felt him- 
self getting used to Crakens^ and not afraid. 
Then they went under thirteen more. These 
kept getting nearer and nearer together, but, 
besides that, the fourteenth had not quite such 
a high span as the former' ones ; but there were 
a great many to come, and yet they got lower 
and lower. 

Both Jack and Mopsa noticed this, but neither 
said a word. The thirtieth coil brushed Jack’s 
cap off, then they had to stoop to pass under the 
two next, and then they had to lie down in the 
bottom of the boat, and they got through with 
the greatest difficulty ; but still before them 
was another ! The boat was driving straight 
towards it, and it lay so close to the water that 
the arch it made was only a foot high. When 
Jack it saw, he called out, “ ISTo ! that T cannot 
bear. Somebody else may do the rest of this 
dream. I shall jump overboard.” 


134 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


Mopsa seemed to answer in quite a pleasant 
voice, as if she was not afraid, — 

“ No, you’d much better wake.” And then she 
went on, “ Jack ! Jack ! why don’t you wake ? ” 
Then all on a sudden Jack opened his eyes, 
and found that he was lying quietly on the grass, 
that little Mopsa really had asked him why he 
did not wake. He saw the Queen too, standing 
by, looking at him, and saying to herself, “ /did 
not put him to sleep. I did not put him to 
sleep.” 

“We don’t want any more stories to-day. 
Queen,” said the apple- woman, in a disrespect- 
ful tone, and she immediately began to sing, 
clattering some tea-things all the time, for a 
kettle was boiling on some sticks, and she was 
going to make tea out of doors : — 

The marten flew to the finch’s nest, 

Feathers, and moss, and a wisp of hay : 

“ The arrow it sped to thy brown mate’s breast ; 
Low in the broom is thy mate to-day.” 

“ Liest thou low, love ? low in the broom ? 

Feathers and moss, and a wisp of hay. 

Warm the white eggs till I learn his doom.” 

She beateth her wings, and away, away. 


MOPSA LEARNS HER LETTERS. 135 


“Ah, my sweet singer, thy days are told 
(Feathers and moss, and a wisp of hay) ! 
Thine eyes are dim, and the eggs grow cold. 
O mournful morrow ! O dark to-day ! ” 

The finch fiew back to her cold, cold nest. 
Feathers and moss, and a wisp of hay, 
Mine is the trouble that rent her breast. 

And home is silent, and love is clay. 


Jack felt very tired indeed,— as much tired 
as if he had really been out all day on the 
river, and gliding under the coils of the Cra- 
ken. He however rose up, when the apple- 
woman called him, and drank his tea, and had 
some fairy bread with it, which refreshed him 
very much. 

After tea he measured Mopsa again, and 
found that she had grown up to a higher but- 
ton. She looked much wiser too, and when he 
said she must be taught to read she made no 
objection, so he arranged daisies and butter- 
cups into the forms of the letters, and she 
learnt nearly all of them that one evening, 
while crowds of the one-foot-one fairies looked 
on, hanging from the boughs and sitting in 
the grass, and shouting out the names of the 


136 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


letters as Mopsa said them. They were very 
polite to Jack, for they gathered all these 
flowers for him, and emptied them from their 
little caps at his feet as fast as he wanted 
them. 


CHAPTER XL 


GOOD MORNING, SISTER. 

Sweet is childhood — childhood’s over, 
Kiss and part. 

Sweet is youth ; but youth’s a rover — 
So’s my heart. 

Sweet is rest ; but by all showing 
Toil is nigh. 

We must go. Alas ! the going, 

Say “ good-by.” 


Jack crept under his canopy, went to sleep 
early that night, and did not wake till the sun 
had risen, when the apple-woman called him, 
and said breakfast was nearly ready. 

The same thing never happens twice in Fairy- 
land, so this time the breakfast was not spread 
in a tent, but on the river. The Queen had 
cut oflP a tiny piece of her robe, the one-foot-one 
fairies had stretched it till it was very large, 
and then they had spread it on the water, where 
it floated and lay like a great carpet of purple 

and gold. One corner of it was moored to the 
^ 137 


138 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


side of Jack’s boat; but be had not observed 
this, because of his canopy. However, that 
was now looped up by the apple-woman, and 
Jack and Mopsa saw what was going on. 

Hundreds of swans had been towing the car- 
pet along, and were still holding it with their 
beaks, while a crowd of doves walked about on 
it, smoothing out the creases and patting it with 
their pretty pink feet till it was quite firm and 
straight. The swans then swam away, and they 
flew away. 

Presently troops of fairies came down to the 
landing-place, jumped into Jack’s boat without 
asking leave, and so got on to the carpet, while 
at the same time a great tree which grew on 
the bank began to push out fresh leaves, as 
large as fans, and shoot out long branches, which 
again shot out others, till very soon there was 
shade all over the carpet, — a thick shadow as 
good as a tent, which was very pleasant, for the 
sun was already hot. 

When the Queen came down, the trees sud- 
denly blossomed out with thousands of red and 
white flowers. 


GOOD MORNING, SISTER. 


130 


“ You must not go on to that carpet,” said the 
apple- worn an ; “ let us sit still in the boat, and 
be served here.” She whispered this as the 
Queen stepped into the boat. 

“Good morning, Jack,” said the Queen. 
“ Good morning, dear.” This was to the apple- 
woman ; and then she stood still for a moment 
and looked earnestly at little Mopsa, and 
sighed. 

“ Well,” she said to her, “ don’t you mean to 
speak to me?” Then Mopsa lifted up her 
pretty face and blushed very rosy red, and said, 
in a shy voice, “ Good morning sister.” 

“ I said so ! ” exclaimed the Queen ; “ I said 
so ! ” and she lifted up her beautiful eyes, and 
murmured out, “ What is to be done now ? ” 

“ Never mind. Queen dear,” said Jack. “ If 
it was rude of Mopsa to say that, she is such 
a little young thing that she does not know 
better.” 

“It was not rude,” said Mopsa, and she 
laughed and blushed again. “ It was not rude, 
and I am not sorry.” ^ 

As she said this the Queen stepped on to the 


140 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


carpet, and all the flowers began to drop down. 
They were something like camellias, and there 
were thousands of them. 

The fairies collected them in little heaps. 
They had no tables and chairs, nor any plates 
and dishes for this breakfast ; but the Queen sat 
down on the carpet close to Jack’s boat, and 
leaned her cheek on her hand, and seemed to be 
lost in thought. The fairies put some flowers 
into her lap, then each took some, and they all 
sat down and looked at the Queen, but she did 
not stir. 

At last Jack said, “ When is the breakfast 
coming ? ” 

“ This is the breakfast,” said the apple- 
woman ; “ these flowers are most delicious eat- 
ing. You never tasted anything so good in 
your life; but we don’t begin till the Queen 
does.” 

Quantities of blossoms had dropped into the 
boat. Several fairies tumbled into it almost 
head over heels, they were in such a hurry, and 
they heaped them into Mopsa’s lap, but took no 
notice of Jack, nor of the apple- woman either. 


GOOD MORNING, SISTER. 141 

At last, when every one had waited some 
time, the Queen pulled a petal off one flower, 
and began to eat, so every one else began; 
and what the apple- woman had said was quite 
true. Jack knew that he never had tasted 
anything half so nice, and he was quite sorry 
when he could not eat any more. So, when 
every one had finished, the Queen leaned her 
arm on the edge of the boat, and, turning her 
lovely face towards Mopsa, said, “ I want to 
whisper to you, sister.” 

“ Oh ! ” said Mopsa, “ I wish I was in Jack’s 
waistcoat pocket again ; but I’m so big now.” 
And she took hold of the two sides of his velvet 
jacket, and hid her face between them. 

“ My old mother sent a message last night,” 
continued the Queen, in a soft, sorrowful voice. 
“ She is much more powerful than we are.” 

‘‘ What is the message ? ” asked Mopsa ; but 
she still hid her face. \ 

So the Queen moved over, and put her lips 
close to Mopsa’s ear, and repeated it : “ There 
cannot be two Queens in one hive.” 

If Mopsa leaves the hive, a fine swarm will 


142 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


go with her,” said the apple- woman. “ I shall, 
for one ; that I shall ! ” 

“ No ! ” answered the Queen. “ I hope not, 
dear ; for you know well that this is my old 
mother’s doing, not mine.” 

“ Oh ! ” said Mopsa ; “ I feel as if I must 
tell a story too, just as the Queen does.” But 
the apple-woman broke out in a very cross 
voice, “ It’s not at all like Fairyland, if you go 
on in this way, and I would as lieve be out of 
it as in it.” Then she began to sing, that she 
and Jack might not hear Mopsa’s story : — 

On the rocks by Aberdeen, 

Where the whislin’ wave had been, 

As I wandered and at e’en 
Was eerie ; 

There I saw thee sailing west, 

And I ran with joy opprest — 

Ay, and took out all my best, 

My dearie. 

Then I busked mysel’ wi’ speed. 

And the neighbors cried “What need? 

’Tis a lass in any weed 
Aye bonny I ” 

Now my heart, my heart is sair. 

What’s the good, though I be fair. 

For thou’ It never see me mair, 

Man Johnnie ! 


GOOD MORNING, SISTER. 


143 


While the apple-woman sang Mopsa finished 
her story ; and the Queen untied the fastening 
which held her carpet to the boat, and went 
floating upon it down the river. 

“ Good-by,” she said, kissing her hand to 
them. “ I must go and prepare for the depu- 
tation.” 

So Jack and Mopsa played about all the 
morning, sometimes in the boat and sometimes 
on the shore, while the apple- woman sat on the 
grass, with her arms folded, and seemed to be 
lost in thought. At last she said to Jack, 
“ What was the name of the great bird that 
carried you two here ? ” 

“ I have forgotten,” answered Jack. “ I’ve 
been trying to remember ever since we heard 
the Queen tell her first story, but I cannot.” 

“ I remember,” said Mopsa. 

“ Tell it then,” replied the apple- woman ; but 
Mopsa shook her head. 

‘‘ I don’t want Jack to go,” she answered. 

“ 1 don’t want to go, nor that you should,” 
said Jack. 

“But the Queen said, ‘ there cannot be two 


144 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


queens in one hive/ and that means that you 
are going to be turned out of this beautiful 
country.” 

“ The other fairy lands are just as nice,” an- 
swered Mopsa ; “ she can only turn me out of 
this one.” 

“ I never heard of more than one Fairyland,” 
observed Jack. 

“ It’s my opinion,” said the apple-woman, 
“ that there are hundreds ! And those one-foot- 
one fairies are such a saucy set, that if I were 
you I should be very glad to get away from 
them. You’ve been here a very little while as 
yet, and you’ve no notion what goes on when 
the leaves begin to drop.” 

“ Tell us,” said Jack. 

“ Well, you must know,” answered the apple- 
woman, “ that fairies cannot abide cold weather ; 
so, when the first rime frost comes, they bury 
themselves.” 

“ Bury themselves? ” repeated Jack. 

“ Yes, I tell you, they bury themselves. Y ou’ve 
seen fairy rings, of course, even in your ownj 
country ; and here the fields are full of them. 


GOOD MORNING, SISTER. 145 

Well, when it gets cold, a company of fairies 
forms itself into a circle, and every one digs a 
little hole. The first that has finished jumps 
into his hole, and his next neighbor covers him 
up, and then jumps into his own little hole, and 
he gets covered up in his turn, till at last there 
is only one left, and he goes and joins another 
circle, hoping he shall have better luck than to 
be last again. I’ve often asked them why they 
do that, but no fairy can ever give a reason for 
anything. They always say that old Mother 
Fate makes them do it. When they come up 
again, they are not fairies at all, but the good 
ones are mushrooms, and the bad ones are toad- 
stools.” 

“ Then you think there are no one-foot- 
one fairies in the other countries,” said 
Jack. 

“ Of course not,” answered the apple-wo- 
man ; “ all the fairy lands are different. It’s 
only the queens that are alike.” 

“ I wish the fairies would not disappear for 
hours,” said Jack. “ They all seem to run off 
and hide themselves.” 

lO 


146 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


“ That’s their way,” answered the apple- 
woman. “ All fairies are part of their time in the 
shape of human creatures, and the rest of it in 
the shape of some animal. These can turn 
themselves, when they please, into Guinea-fowl. 
In the heat of the day they generally prefer to 
be in that form, and they sit among the leaves of 
the trees. 

“ A great many are now with the Queen, be- 
cause there is a deputation coming ; but if I were 
to begin to sing, such a flock of Guinea-hens 
would gather round, that the boughs of the trees 
would bend with their weight, and they would 
light on the grass all about so thickly that not a 
blade of grass would be seen as far as the song 
was heard.” 

So she began to sing, and the air was darkened 
by great flocks of these Guinea-fowl. They 
alighted just as she had said, and kept time with 
their heads and their feet, nodding like a crowd 
of mandarins; and yet it was nothing but 
a stupid old song that you would have 
thought could have no particular meaning 
for them. 


GOOD MORNING, SISTER. 
LIKE A LAVEROCK IN THE LIFT. 


14T 


I. 

It’s we two, it’s we two, it’s we two for aye. 

All the world and we two, and Heaven be our stay. 
Like a laverock in the lift, sing, O bonny bride ! 

All the world was Adam once, with Eve by his side. 


II. 

What’s the world, my lass, my love I — what can it do ? 
I am thine, and thou art mine ; life is sweet and new. 
If the world have missed the mark, let it stand by. 

For we two have gotten leave, and once more we’ll try. 

III. 

Like a laverock in the lift, sing, O bonny bride 1 
It’s we two, it’s we two, happy side by side. 

Take a kiss from me thy man ; now the song begins : 

“ All is made afresh for us, and the brave heart wins.” 


IV. 

When the darker days come, and no sun will shine, 
Thou shalt dry my tears, lass, and I’ll dry thine. 

It’s we two, it’s we two, while the world’s away. 
Sitting by the golden sheaves on our wedding-day. 


CHAPTEK XII. 


THEY RUN AWAY FROM OLD MOTHER FATE. 

A land that living warmth disowns, 

It meets my wondering ken ; 

A land where all the men are stones, 

Or all the stones are men. 

Before the apple- woman had finished, Jack 
and Mopsa saw the Queen coming in great 
state, followed by thousands of the one-foot-one 
fairies, and leading by a ribbon round its neck 
a beautiful brown doe. A great many pretty 
fawns were walking among the fairies. 

“Here’s the deputation,” said the apple- 
woman ; but as the Guinea-fowl rose like a cloud 
at the approach of the Queen, and the fairies 
and fawns pressed forward, there was a good 
deal of noise and confusion, during which Mopsa 
stepped up close to Jack, and whispered in his 
ear, “ Kemember, Jack, whatever you can do 

you may do.” 

148 


THEY RUN FROM OLD MOTHER FATE. 149 

Then the brown doe laid down at Mopsa’s 
feet, and the Queen began : — 

“ Jack and Mopsa, I love you both. I had a 
message last night from my old mother, and I 
told you what it was.” 

“Yes, Queen,” said Mopsa, “you did.” 

“ And now,” continued the Queen, “ she has 
sent this beautiful brown doe from the country 
beyond the rkke, where they are in the greatest 
distress for a queen, to offer Mopsa the crown ; 
and. Jack, it is fated that Mopsa is to reign 
there, so you had better say no more about it.” 

“I don’t want to be a queen,” said Mopsa, 
pouting ; “ I want to play with Jack.” 

“ You are a queen already,” answered the real 
Queen ;“ at least, you will be in a few days. 
You are so much grown, even since the morning 
that you come up nearly to Jack’s shoulder. In 
four days you will be as tall as I am ; and it is 
quite impossible that any one of fairy birth 
should be as tall as a queen in her own 
country.” 

“ But I don’t see what stags and does can 
want with a queen,” said Jack. 


150 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


“ They were obliged to turn into deer,” said the 
Queen, “ when they crossed their own border ; 
but they are fairies when they are at home, 
and they want Mopsa, because they are always 
obliged to have a queen of alien birth.” 

“ If I go,” said Mopsa, “ shall Jack go too ? ” 
“ Oh no,” answered the Queen ; “ Jack and 
the apple- woman are my subjects.” 

“ Apple- woman,” said Jack, “ tell us what you 
think ; shall Mopsa go to this country ? ” 
“Why, child,” said the apple-woman, “go 
away from here she must; but she need not 
go off with the deer, I suppose, unless she likes. 
They look gentle and harmless ; but it is 
very hard to get at the truth in this country, 
and I’ve heard queer stories about them.” 

“ Have you ? ” said the Queen. “ Well, you 
can repeat them if you like ; but remember that 
the poor brown doe cannot contradict them.” 

So the apple- woman said, “ I have heard, but 
I don’t know how true it is, that in that country 
they shut up their queen in a great castle, and 
cover her with a veil, and never let the sun shine 
on her, for if by chance the least little sun- 


THEY RUN FROM OLD MOTHER FATE. 151 

beam should light on her she would turn into a 
doe directly, and all the nation would turn with 
her and stay so.” 

“ I don’t want to be shut up in a castle,” said 
Mopsa. 

But is it true ? ” asked Jack. 

“Well,” said the apple- woman, “as I told 
you before, I cannot make out whether it’s true 
or not, for all these stags and fawns look very 
mild, gentle creatures.” 

“ I won’t go,” said Mopsa ; “ 1 would rather 
run away.” 

All this time the Queen with the brown doe 
had been gently pressing with the crowd near- 
er and nearer to the brink of the river, so that 
now Jack and Mopsa, who stood facing them, 
were quite close to the boat ; and while they 
argued and tried to make Mopsa come away. 
Jack suddenly whispered to her to spring into 
the boat, which she did, and he after her, and 
at the same time he cried out, — 

“ Now, boat, if you are my boat, set off as 
fast as you can, and let nothing of fairy birth 
get on board of you.” 


152 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


'No sooner did he begin to speak than the boat 
swung itself away from the edge, and almost 
in a moment it was in the very middle of the 
river, and beginning to float gently down with 
the stream. 

Now, as I have told you before, that river 
runs up the country instead of down to the sea, 
so Jack and Mopsa floated still farther up into 
Fairyland ; and they saw the Queen, and the 
apple-woman, and all the crowd of fawns and 
f airiesValking along the bank of the river, keep- 
ing exactly to the same pace that the boat went ; 
and this went on for hours and hours, so that 
there seemed to be no chance that J ack and 
Mopsa could land ; and they heard no voices at 
all, nor any sound but the bav ' of the old 
hound, who could not swim ol to them, 
because Jack had forbidden the boat to take 
anything of fairy birth on board of her. 

Luckily the bottom of the boat was full of 
those delicious flowers that had dropped into it 
at breakfast-time, so there was plenty of nice 
food for Jack and Mopsa; and Jack noticed, 
when he looked at her towards evening, that 


THEY RUN FROM OLD MOTHER FATE. 153 

she was now nearl}^ as tall as himself, and that 
her lovely brown hair floated down to her 
ankles. 

“Jack,” she said, before it grew dusk, “ will 
you give me your little purse that has the silver 
fourpence in it ? ” 

Now Mopsa had often played with this purse. 
It was lined with a nice piece of pale green silk, 
and when Jack gave it to her she pulled the silk 
out, and shook it, and patted it, and stretched 
it, just as the Queen had done, and it came into 
a most lovely cloak, which she tied round her 
neck. Then she twisted up her long hair into 
a coil, and fastened it round her head, and called 
to the flre-flies which were beginning to glitter 
on the trees to come, and they came and 
alighted in a row upon the coil, and turned into 
diamonds directly.* So now Mopsa had got a 
crown and a robe, and she was so beautiful that 
Jack thought he should never be tired of looking 
at her ; but it was nearly dark now, and he was 
so sleepy and tired that he could not keep his 
eyes open, though he tried very hard, and he 
began to blink, and then he began to nod, and 


154 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


at last he fell fast asleep, and did not awake till 
the morning. 

Then he sat up in the boat, and looked about 
him. A wonderful country, indeed ! — no trees, 
no grass, no houses, nothing but red stones and 
red sand, — and Mopsa was gone. Jack jumped 
on shore, for the boat had stopped, and was 
close to the brink of the river. He looked about 
for some time, and at last, in the shadow of a 
pale brown rock, he found her ; and oh ! de- 
lightful surprise, the apple-woman was there 
too. She was saying, “ 0 my bones ! Dearie, 
dearie me, how they do ache ? ” That was not 
surprising, for she had been out all night. She 
had walked beside the river with the Queen and 
her tribe till they came to a little tinkling 
stream, which divides their country from the 
sandy land, and there they were obliged to 
stop ; they could not cross it. But the apple- 
woman sprang over, and, though the Queen 
told her she must come back again in twenty- 
four hours, she did not appear to be displeased. 
How the Guinea-hens, when they had come to 
listen, the day before, to the apple- woman’s 


THEY RUN FROM OLD MOTHER FATE. 155 

song, had brought each of them a grain of 
maize in her beak, and had thrown it into her 
apron ; so when she got up she carried it with 
her gathered up there, and now she had been 
baking some delicious little cakes on a fire of 
dry sticks that the river had drifted down, and 
Mopsa had taken a honeycomb from the rock, 
so that they all had a very nice breakfast. And 
the apple-woman gave them a great deal of 
good advice, and told them if they wished to 
remain in Fairyland, and not be caught by the 
brown doe and her followers, they must cross 
over the purple mountains. “ For on the other 
side of those peaks,” she said, have heard 
that fairies live who have the best of characters 
for being kind and just. I am sure they would 
never shut up a poor queen in a castle. 

“ But the best thing you could do, dear,” she 
said to Mopsa, “ would be to let Jack call the 
bird, and make her carry you back to his own 
country.” 

“ The Queen is not at all kind,” said Jack ; 
“ I have been very kind to her, and she should 
have let Mopsa stay.” 


156 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


“ JSTo, Jack, she could not,” said Mopsa ; ‘‘ but 
I wish I had not grown so fast, and I don’t like 
to go to your country. I would rather run 
away.” 

“ But who is to tell us where to run ? ” asked 
Jack. 

“ Oh,” said Mopsa, “ some of these people.” 

“ I don’t see anybody,” said Jack, looking 
about him. 

Mopsa pointed to a group of stones, and 
then to another group, and as Jack looked he 
saw that in shape they were something like 
people, — stone people. One stone was a little 
like an old man with a mantle over him, and 
he was sitting on the ground with his knees 
up nearly to his chin. Another was like a 
woman with a hood on, and she seemed to be 
leaning her chin on her hand. Close to these 
stood something very much like a cradle in 
shape ; and beyond were stones that resembled 
a flock of sheep lying down on the bare sand, 
with something that reminded Jack of the 
figure of a man lying asleep near them, with 
his face to the ground. 


THEY RUN FROM OLD MOTHER FATE. 157 

That was a very curious country; all the 
stones reminded you of people or of animals, 
and the shadows that they cast were much 
more like than the stones themselves. There 
were blocks with things that you might have 
mistaken for stone ropes twisted round them ; 
but, looking at the shadows, you could see dis- 
tinctly that they were trees, and that what coiled 
round were snakes. Then there was a rocky 
prominence, at one side of which was something 
like a sitting figure, but its shadow, lying on 
the ground, was that of a girl with a distaff. 
Jack was very much surprised at all this; 
Mopsa was not. She did not see, she said, that 
one thing was more wonderful than another. 
All the fairy lands were wonderful, but the 
men-and- women world was far more so. She 
and Jack went about among the stones all day, 
and as the sun got low both the shadows and 
the blocks themselves became more and more 
like people, and if you went close you could 
now see features, very sweet, quiet features, 
but the eyes were all shut. 

By this time the apple-woman began to feel 


158 


MOPSA THE FAIR\. 


very sad. She knew, she should soon have to 
leave Jack and Mopsa, and she said to Mopsa, 
as they finished their evening meal, ‘‘ I wish 
you would ask the inhabitants a few questions, 
dear, before I go, for I want to know whether 
they can put you in the way how to cross the 
purple mountains.” 

Jack said nothing, for he thought he would 
see what Mopsa was going to do ; so when she 
got up and went towards the shape that was 
like a cradle he followed, and the apple-woman 
too. Mopsa went to the figure that sat by the 
cradle. It was a stone yet, but when Mopsa laid 
her little warm hand on its bosom it smiled. 

“Dear,” said Mopsa, “I wish you would 
wake.” 

A curious little sound was now heard, but 
the figure did not move, and the apple- woman 
lifted Mopsa on to the lap of the statue ; then 
she put her arms round its neck, and spoke to 
it again very distinctly : “ Dear ! why don’t 
you wake? You had better wake now ; the 
baby’s crying.” 

Jack now observed that the sound he had 


THEY RUN FROM OLD MOTHER FATE. 159 

heard was something like the crying of a baby. 
He also heard the figure answering Mopsa. It 
said, I am only a stone ! ” 

“ Then,” said Mopsa, ‘‘ I am not a queen yet. 
I cannot wake her. Take me down.” 

“ I am not warm,” said the figure ; and that 
was quite true, and yet she was not a stone 
now which reminded one of a woman, but a 
woman that reminded one of a stone. 

All the west was very red with the sunset, 
and the river was red too, and Jack distinctly 
saw some of the coils of rope glide down from 
the trees and slip into the water ; next he saw 
the stones that had looked like sheep raise up 
their heads in the twilight, and then lift them- 
selves and shake their woolly sides. At that 
instant the large white moon heaved up her 
pale face between two dark blue hills, and upon 
this the statue put out its feet and gently 
rocked the cradle. 

“ Then it spoke again to Mopsa : “ What 
was it that you wished me to tell you ? ” 

“How to find the way over those purple 
mountains,” said Mopsa. 


160 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


“ You must set off in an hour, then,” said 
the woman ; and she had hardly anything of 
the stone about her now. “ You can easily 
find it by night without any guide, but nothing 
can ever take you to it by day.” 

But we would rather stay a few days in 
this curious country,” said Jack; “let us wait 
at least till to-morrow night.” 

The statue at this moment rubbed her hands 
together, as if they still felt cold and stiff. 
“ You are quite welcome to stay,” she ob- 
served ; “ but you had better not.” 

“ Why not ? ” persisted Jack. 

“ Father,” said the woman, rising and shak- 
ing the figure next to her by the sleeve, “ Wake 
up ! ” What had looked like an old man was 
a real old man now, and he got up and began 
to gather sticks to make a fire, and to pick up 
the little brown stones which had been scattered 
about all day, but which now were berries of 
coffee ; the larger ones, which you might find 
here and there, were rasped rolls. Then the 
woman answered Jack, “ Why not ? Why, be- 
cause it’s full moon to-night at midnight, and 


THEY RUN FROM OLD MOTHER FATE. 16 1 

the moment the moon is past the full your 
Queen, whose country you have just left, will 
be able to cross over the little stream, and she 
will want to take you and that other mortal back. 
She can do it, of course, if she pleases ; and we 
can afford you no protection, for by that time 
we shall be stones again. We are only people 
two hours out of the twenty -four.’’ 

“ That is very hard,” observed Jack. 

“ !N’o,” said the woman, in a tone of indiffer- 
ence ; “ it comes to the same thing, as we live 
twelve times as long as others do.” 

By this time the shepherd was gently driv- 
ing his flock down to the water, and round fifty 
little fires groups of people were sitting roast- 
ing coffee, while cows were lowing to be 
milked, and girls with distaffs were coming to 
them slowly, for no one was in a hurry there. 
They say in that country that they wish to 
enjoy their day quietly, because it is so 
short. 

“ Gan you tell us anything of the land be- 
yond the mountains ? ” asked Jack. 

“ Yes,” said the woman. “ Of all fairy lands 


162 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


it is the best ; the people are the gentlest and 
kindest.” 

“ Then I had better take Mopsa there than 
down the river ? ” said Jack. 

“ You can’t take her down the river,” replied 
the woman ; and Jack thought she laughed and 
was glad of that. 

“ Why not ? ” asked J ack. “ I have a boat.” 

“Yes, sir,” answered the woman; “but 
where is it now ? ” 


CHAPTER XIII. 


MELON SEEDS. 

Rosalind. — Well, this is the forest of Arden. 

Touchstone. — Ay, now am I in Arden : the more fool 
I ; when I was at home I was in a better place ; but 
travelers must be content. 

As you Like it. 

Where is it now ? ” said the stone- woman ; 
and when Jack heard that he ran down to the 
river, and looked right and looked left. At 
last he saw his boat, — a mere speck in the dis- 
tance, it had floated so far. 

He called it, but it was far beyond the reach 
of his voice ; and Mopsa, who had followed him, 
said, — 

“ It does not signify. Jack, for I feel that no 
place is the right place for me but that country 
beyond the purple mountains, and I shall never 
be happy unless we go there.” 

So they walked back towards the stone- 

people hand in hand, and the apple-woman 

163 


164 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


presently joined them. She was crying gently, 
for she knew that she must soon pass over the 
little stream, and part with these whom she 
called her dear children. Jack had often 
spoken to her that day about going home to 
her own country, but she said it was too late 
to think of that now, and she must end her 
days in the land of Faery. 

The kind stone-people asked them to come 
and sit by their little fire ; and in the dusk the 
woman whose baby had slept in a stone cradle 
took it up and began to sing to it. She 
seemed astonished when she heard that the 
apple-woman had power to go home if she 
could make up her mind to do it ; and as she 
sang she looked at her with wonder and pity. 

Little babe, while burns the west, 

Warm thee, warm thee in my breast ; 

While the moon doth shine her best, 

And the dews distil not. 

All the land so sad, so fair — 

Sweet its toils are, blest its care. 

Child, we may not enter there I 
Some there are that will not. 

Fain would I thy margins know, 

Land of work, and land of snow ; 


MELON SEEDS. 


165 


Land of life, whose rivers flow 
On, and on, and stay not. 

Fain would I thy small limbs fold, 

While the weary hours are told. 

Little babe in cradle cold. 

Some there are that may not. 

“You are not exactly fairies, I suppose?” 
said Jack. “ If you were, you could go to our 
country when you pleased.” 

“ No,” said the woman ; “ Ave are not exactly 
fairies ; but we shall be more like them when 
our punishment is over.” 

“ I am sorry you are punished,” answered 
Jack, “for you seem very nice, kind people.” 

“ W"e were not always kind,” answered the 
woman ; “ and perhaps Ave are only kind noAV 
because Ave have no time, and no chance of 
being otherwise. I’m sure I don’t know about 
that. We were powerful once, and we did a 
cruel deed. I must not tell you Avhat it Avas. 
We were told that our hearts were all as cold 
as stones, — and I suppose they were, — and we 
Avere doomed to be stones all our lives, ex- 
cepting for the two hours of twilight. There 
was no one to sow the crops, or Avater the 


166 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


grass, so it all failed, and the trees died, and 
our houses fell, and our possessions were stolen 
from us.” 

“ It is a very sad thing,” observed the apple- 
woman ; and then she said that she must go, 
for she had a long way to walk before she 
should reach the little brook that led to the 
country of her own queen ; so she kissed the 
two children. Jack and Mopsa, and they begged 
her again to think better of it, and return to 
her own land. But she said No ; she had no 
heart for work now, and could not bear either 
cold or poverty. 

Then the woman who was hugging her little 
baby, and keeping it cosy and warm, began to 
tell Jack and Mopsa that it was time they 
should begin to run away to the country over 
the purple mountains, or else the Queen would 
overtake them and be very angry with them ; 
so, with many promises that they would mind 
her directions, they set off hand in hand to 
run ; but before they left her they could see 
plainly that she was beginning to turn again 
into stone. However, she had given them a 


MELON SEEDS. 


167 


slice of melon with the seeds in it. It had 
been growing on the edge of the river, and 
was stone in the daytime, like everything 
else. “ When you are tired,” she said, “ eat 
the seeds, and they will enable you to go run- 
ning on. You can put the slice into this little 
red pot, which has string handles to it, and you 
can hang it on your arm. While you have it 
with you it will not turn to stone, but if you 
lay it down it will, and then it will be use- 
less.” 

So, as I said before. Jack and Mopsa set off 
hand in hand to run ; and as they ran all the 
things and people gradually and softly settled 
themselves to turn into stone again. Their 
cloaks and gowns left off fluttering, and hung 
stiffly ; and then they left off their occupations, 
and sat down, or laid down themselves ; and 
the sheep and cattle turned stiff and stone-like 
too, so that in a very little while all that 
country was nothing but red stones and red 
sand, just as it had been in the morning. 

Presently the full moon, which had been hid- 
ing behind a cloud, came out, and they saw their 


168 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


shadows, which fell straight before them ; so 
they ran on hand in hand very merrily til] the 
half-moon came up, and the shadows she made 
them cast fell sideways. This was rather awk- 
ward, because as long as only the full moon 
gave them shadows, they had but to follow 
them, in order to go straight towards the purple 
mountains, i'l’ow they were not always sure 
which were her shadows ; and presently a cres- 
cent moon came,and still further confused them; 
also the sand began to have tufts of grass in it ; 
and then, when they had gone a little farther, 
there were beautiful patches of anemones, and 
hyacinths, and jonquils, and crown imperials, 
and they stopped to gather them ; and they got 
among some trees, and then, as they had noth- 
ing to guide them but the shadows, and these 
went all sorts of ways, they lost a great deal of 
time, and the trees became of taller growth ; 
but they still ran on and on till they got into a 
thick forest where it was quite dark, and here 
Mopsa began to cry, for she was tired. 

“ If I could only begin to be a queen,” she 
said to Jack, “ I could go wherever I pleased. 


MELON SEEDS. 


169 


I am not a fairy, and yet I am not a proper 
queen. Oh, what shall I do ? I cannot go any 
farther.”- 

So Jack gave her some of the seeds of the 
melon, though it was so dark that he could 
scarcely find the way to her mouth, and then 
he took some himself, and they both felt 
that they were rested, and Jack comforted 
Mopsa. 

“ If you are not a queen yet,” he said, “ you 
will be by to-morrow morning ; for when our 
shadows danced on before us yours was so very 
nearly the same height as mine, that I could 
hardly see any difference.” 

When they reached the end of that great 
forest, and found themselves out in all sorts of 
moonlight, the first thing they did was to laugh, 
— the shadows looked so odd, sticking out in 
every direction ; and the next thing they did 
was to stand back to back, and put their heels 
together, and touch their heads together, to see 
by the shadow which was the taller ; and Jack 
was still the least bit in the world taller than 
Mopsa ; so they knew she was not a queen yet. 


170 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


aud they ate some more melon-seeds, and began 
to climb up the mountain. 

They climbed till the trees of the forest looked 
no bigger than gooseberry bushes, and then they 
climbed till the whole forest looked only like a 
patch of moss ; and then, when they got a little 
higher, they saw the wonderful river, a long way 
off, and the snow glittering on the peaks over- 
head ; and while they were looking and won- 
dering how they should find a pass, the moons 
all went down, one after the other, and, if 
Mopsa had not found some glowworms, they 
would have been quite in the dark again. How- 
ever she took a dozen of them, and put them 
round Jack’s ankles, so that when he walked 
he could see where he was going ; and he found 
a little sheep path, and she followed him. 

How they had noticed during the night how 
many shooting-stars kept darting about from 
time to time, at last one shot close by them, 
and fell in the soft moss on before. There it lay 
shining ; and Jack, though he began to feel very 
tired again, made haste to it, for he wanted to 
see what it was like. 


MELON SEEDS. 


171 


It was not what you would have supposed. 
It was soft and round, and about the color of 
a ripe apricot ; it was covered with fur, and in 
fact it was evidently alive, and had curled itself 
up into a round ball. 

“ The dear little thing ! ” said Jack, as he held 
it in his hand and showed it to Mopsa ; “ how 
its heart beats. Is it frightened ? ” 

“ Who are you ? ” said Mopsa to the thing. 
“ What is your name 

The little creature made a sound that seemed 
like “ Wisp.” 

“ Uncurl yourself. Wisp,” said Mopsa. “ Jack 
and I want to look at you.” 

So Wisp unfolded himself, and showed two 
little black eyes, and spread out two long filmy 
wings. He was like a most beautiful bat, and 
the light he shed out illuminated their faces. 

“ It is only one of the air fairies,” said Mopsa. 
“ Pretty creature ! It never did any harm, 
and would like to do us good if it knew how, 
for it knows that I shall be a queen very soon. 
Wisp, if you like you may go and tell your 
friends and relations that we want to cross 


172 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


over the mountains, and if they can they may 
help us.” 

Upon this Wisp spread out his wings, and 
shot off again ; and Jack’s feet were so tired 
that he sat down, and pulled off one of his 
shoes, for he thought there was a stone in it. 
So he set the little red jar beside him, and 
quite forgot what the stone- woman had said, 
but went on shaking his shoe, and buckling 
it, and admiring the glowworms round his 
ankle, till Mopsa said, “ Darling Jack, I am so 
dreadfully tired ! Give me some more melon- 
seeds.” Then he lifted up the jar, and thought 
it felt very heavy ; and when he put in his 
hand, jar, and melon, and seeds were all turned 
to stone together. 

They were both very sorry, and they sat still 
for a minute or two, for they were much too 
tired to stir ; and then shooting-stars began to 
appear in all directions. The fairy bat had told 
his friends and relations, and they were coming. 
One fell at Mopsa’s feet, another in her lap ; 
more, more, all about, behind, before, and over 
them. And they spread out long filmy wings. 


MELON SEEDS. 


173 


some of them a yard long, till Jack and Mopsa 
seemed to be enclosed in a perfect network of 
the rays of shooting-stars, and they were both a 
good deal frightened. Fifty or sixty shooting- 
stars, with black eyes that could stare, were 
enough, they thought, to frighten anybody. 

“ If we had anything to sit upon,” said Mopsa, 
“ they could carry us over the pass.” She had 
no sooner spoken than the largest of the bats 
bit off one of his own long wings, and laid it 
at Mopsa’s feet. It did not seem to matter 
much to him that he had parted with it, for he 
shot out another wing directly, just as a comet 
shoots out a ray of light sometimes, when it ap- 
proaches the sun. 

Mopsa thanked the shooting fairy, and, taking 
the wing, began to stretch it, till it was large 
enough for her and Jack to sit upon. Then all 
the shooting fairies came round it, took its edges 
in their mouths, and began to fly away with it 
over the mountains. They went slowly, for 
Jack and Mopsa were heavy, and they flew 
very low, resting now and then ; but in the 
course of time they carried the wing over the 


174 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


pass, and half-way down the other side. Then 
the sun came up ; and the moment he appeared 
all their lovely apricot-colored light was gone, 
and they only looked like common bats, such 
as you can see every evening. 

They set down Jack and Mopsa, folded up 
their long wings, and hung down their heads. 

Mopsa thanked them, and said they had been 
useful ; but still they looked ashamed, and 
crept into little corners and crevices of the 
rock, to hide. 


CHAPTEE XIY. 


EEEDS AND RUSHES. 

’Tis merry, ’tis merry in Fairyland, 

Where Fairy birds are singing ; 

When the court doth sit by the monarch’s side, 
With bit and bridle ringing. 

Walter Scott. 

There were many fruit-trees on that slope 
of the mountain, and J ack and Mopsa, as they 
came down, gathered some fruit for breakfast, 
and did not feel very tired, for the long ride 
on the wing had rested them. 

They could not see the plain, for a slight blue 
mist hung over it ; but the sun was hot already, 
and as they came down they saw a beautiful 
bed of high reeds, and thought they would sit 
awhile and rest in it. A rill of clear water ran 
beside the bed, so when they had reached it 
they sat down, and began to consider what they 
should do next. 

“Jack,” said Mopsa, “did you see anything 


176 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


particular as you came down with the shooting- 
stars ? ” 

“170, 1 saw nothing so interesting as they 
were,” answered Jack. “ I was looking at them 
and watching how they squeaked to one an- 
other, and how they had little hooks in their 
wings, with which they held the large wing 
that we sat on.” 

“ But I saw something,” said Mopsa. “ Just 
as the sun rose I looked down, and in the love- 
liest garden I ever saw, and all among trees 
and woods, I saw a most beautiful castle. O, 
Jack ! I am sure that castle is the place I am 
to live in, and now we have nothing to do but 
to find it. I shall soon be a queen, and there I 
shall reign.” 

“Then I shall be king there,” said Jack; 
“shall I?” 

“ Yes, if you can,” answered Mopsa. “ Of 
course, whatever you can do you may do. And, 
Jack, this is a much better fairy country than 
either the stony land or the other that we first 
came to, for this castle is a real place ! It will 
not melt away. There the people can work. 


REEDS AND RUSHES. 


m 


they know how to love each other : common 
fairies cannot do that, I know. They can laugh 
and cry, and I shall teach them several things 
that they do not know yet. Oh! do let us 
make haste and find the castle.” 

So they arose ; but they turned the wrong 
way, and by mistake walked farther and farther 
in among the reeds, whose feathery heads puffed 
into Mopsa’s face, and Jack’s coat was all 
covered with the fluffy seed. 

“ This is very odd,” said Jack. “ I thought 
this was only a small bed of reeds when we 
stepped into it ; but really we must have walked 
a mile already.” 

But they walked on and on, till Mopsa grew 
quite faint, and her sweet face became very 
pale, for she knew that the beds of reeds were 
spreading faster than they walked, and then 
they shot up so high that it was impossible to 
see over their heads ; so at last Jack and Mopsa 
were so tired that they sat down, and Mopsa 
began to cry. 

However, Jack was the braver of the two 

this time, and he comforted Mopsa, and told 
12 


178 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


her that she was nearly a queen, and would 
never reach her castle by sitting still. So she 
got up and took his hand, and he went on be- 
fore, parting the reeds and pulling her after 
him, till all on a sudden they heard the sweetest 
sound in the world ; it was like a bell, and it 
sounded again and again. 

It was the castle clock, and it was striking 
twelve at noon. 

As it finished striking they came out at the 
farther edge of the great bed of reeds, and 
there was the castle straight before them, — a 
beautiful castle, standing on the slope of a hill. 
The grass all about it was covered with beauti- 
ful fiowers; two of the taller turrets were 
overgrown with ivy, and a flag was flying on a 
staff ; but everything was so silent and lonely 
that it made one sad to look on. As Jack and 
Mopsa drew near they trod as gently as they 
could, and did not say a word. 

All the windows were shut, but there was a 
great door in the center of the building, and 
they went towards it, hand in hand. 

What a beautiful hall! The great door 


REEDS AND RUSHES. 


179 


stood wide open, and they could see what a 
delightful place this must he to live in : it was 
paved with squares of blue and white marble, 
and here and there carpets were spread, with 
chairs and tables upon them. They looked 
and saw a great dome overhead, filled with 
windows of colored glass, and they cast down 
blue and golden and rosy refiections. 

“ There is my home that 1 shall live in,” said 
Mopsa ; and she came close to the door, and 
they both looked in, till at last she let go of 
Jack’s hand, and stepped over the threshold. 

The bell in the tower sounded again more 
sweetly than ever, and the instant Mopsa was 
inside there came from behind the fiuted col- 
umns, which rose up on every side, the brown 
doe, followed by troops of deer and fawns ! 

“ Mopsa ! Mopsa ! ” cried Jack, “ come away ! 
come back ! ” But Mopsa was too much aston- 
ished to stir, and something seemed to hold 
Jack from following ; but he looked and looked, 
till, as the brown doe advanced, the door of 
the castle closed, — Mopsa was shut in, and 
Jack was left outside. 


180 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


So Mopsa had come straight to the place she 
thought she had run away from. 

“ But I am determined to get her away from 
those creatures,” thought Jack ; “ she does not 
want to reign over deer.” And he began to 
look about him, hoping to get in. It was of no 
use : all the windows in that front of the castle 
were high, and when he tried to go round, he 
came to a high wall with battlements. Against 
some parts of this wall the ivy grew, and looked 
as if it might have grown there for ages ; its 
stems were thicker than his waist, and its 
branches were spread over the surface like net- 
work ; so by means of them he hoped to climb 
to the top. 

He immediately began to try. Oh, how 
high the wall was ! First he came to several 
sparrows’ nests, and very much frightened the 
sparrows were ; then he reached starlings’ 
nests, and very angry the starlings were ; but 
at last, just under the coping, he came to jack- 
daws’ nests, and these birds were very friendly, 
and pointed out to him the best little holes for 
him to put his feet into. At last he reached 


REEDS AND RUSHES. 


181 


the top, and found to his delight that the wall 
was three feet thick, and he could walk upon 
it quite comfortably, and look down into a 
lovely garden, where all the trees were in 
blossom, and creepers tossed their long tendrils 
from tree to tree, covered with puffs of yellow, 
or bells of white, or bunches and knots of blue 
or rosy bloom. 

He could look down into the beautiful empty 
rooms of the castle, and he walked cautiously 
on the wall till he came to the west front, and 
reached a little casement window that had 
latticed panes. Jack peeped in ; nobody was 
there. He took his knife, and cut away a 
little bit of lead to let out the pane, and it fell 
with such a crash on the pavement below that 
he wondered it did not bring the deer over to 
look at what he was about. Hobody came. 

He put in his hand and opened the latchet, 
and with very little trouble got down into the 
room. Still nobody was to be seen. He 
thought that the room, years ago, might have 
been a fairies’ schoolroom, for it was strewn 
with books, slates, and all sorts of copybooks. 


182 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


A fine soft dust had settled down over every- 
thing, — pens, papers, and all. Jack opened a 
copybook : its pages were headed with maxims, 
just as ours are, which proved that these fairies 
must have been superior to such as he had 
hitherto come among. Jack read some of 
them : — 

Turn your back on the light, and you’ll follow a 
shadow. 

The deaf queen Fate has dumb courtiers. 

If the hound is your foe, don’t sleep in his kennel. 

That that is, is. 

And so on ; but nobody came, and no sound 
was heard, so he opened the door, and found 
himself in a long and most splendid gallery, 
all hung with pictures, and spread with a most 
beautiful carpet, which was as soft and white 
as a piece of wool, and wrought with a 
beautiful device. This was the letter M, with 
a crown and scepter, and underneath a beauti- 
ful little boat, exactly like the one in which he 
had come up the river. Jack felt sure that 
this carpet had been made for Mopsa, and he 
went along the gallery upon it till he reached 
a grand staircase of oak that was almost black 


REEDS AND RUSHES. 


183 


with age, and he stole gently down it, for he 
began to feel rather shy, more especially as he 
could now see the great hall under the dome, 
and that it had a beautiful lady in it, and many 
other people, but no deer at all. 

.These fairy people were something like the 
one-foot-one fairies, but much larger and more 
like children ; and they had very gentle, happy 
faces, and seemed to be extremely glad and 
gay. But seated on a couch, where lovely 
painted windows threw down all sorts of rain- 
bow colors on her, was a beautiful fairy lady, 
as large as a woman. She had Mopsa in her 
arms, and was looking down upon her with 
eyes full of love, while at her side stood a boy, 
who was e^icctly and precisely like Jack him- 
self. He had rather long light hair and gray 
eyes, and a velvet jacket. That was all Jack 
could see at first, but as he drew nearer the boy 
turned, and then Jack felt as if he was looking 
at himself in the glass. 

Mopsa had been very tired, and now she was 
fast asleep, with her head on that lady’s 
shoulder. The boy kept looking at her, and 


184 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


he seemed very happy indeed ; and so did the 
lady, and she presently told him to bring Jack 
something to eat. 

It was rather a curious speech that she made 
to him ; it was this : — 

Jack, bring Jack some breakfast.” 

“ What ! ” thought Jack to himself, “has he 
got a face like mine and a name like mine too ? ” 

So that other Jack went away, and presently 
came back with a golden plate full of nice 
things to eat. 

“ I know you don’t like me,” he said, as he 
came up to Jack with the plate. 

“ Not like him ? ” repeated the lady ; “ and 
pray what reason have you for not liking my 
royal nephew ? ” 

“ O dame ! ” exclaimed the boy, and laughed. 

The lady, on hearing this, turned pale, for 
she perceived that she herself had mistaken the 
one for the other. 

“ I see you know how to laugh,” said the real 
Jack. “You are wiser people than those whom 
I went to first ; but the reason I don’t like you 
is, that you are so exactly like me.” 


REEDS AND RUSHES. 


185 


‘‘ I am not ! ” exclaimed the boy. “ Only 
hear him, dame ! You mean, I suppose, that 
you are so exactly like me. I am sure I don’t 
know what you mean by it.” 

“Nor I either,” replied Jack, almost in a 
passion. 

“ It couldn’t be helped, of course,” said the 
other Jack. 

“ Hush ! hush ! ” said the fairy woman ; 
“don’t wake our dear little Queen. Was it 
you, my royal nephew, who spoke last ? ” 

“ Yes, dame,” answered the boy, and again 
he offered the plate ; but Jack was swelling 
with indignation, and he gave the plate a push 
with his elbow, which scattered the fruit and 
bread on the ground. 

“ I won’t eat it,” he said ; but when the other 
Jack went and picked it up again, and said, 
“ Oh, yes, do, old fellow ; it’s not my fault, you 
know,” he began to consider that it was no use 
being cross in Fairyland ; so he forgave his 
double, and had just finished his breakfast 
when Mopsa woke. 


CHAPTER XY. 


THE queen’s wand. 

One, two, three, four ; one, two, three, four ; 

’Tis still one, two, three, four. 

Mellow and silvery are the tones. 

But I wish the bells were more. 

Southey. 

Mopsa woke : she was rather too big to be 
nursed, for she was the size of Jack, and looked 
like a sweet little girl of ten years, but she did 
not always behave like one; sometimes she 
spoke as wisely as a grown-up woman, and 
sometimes she changed again and seemed like 
a child. 

Mopsa lifted up her head and pushed back 
her long hair : her coronet had fallen off while 
she was in the bed of reeds ; and she said to 
the beautiful dame, — 

“ I am a queen now.” 

“Yes, my sweet Queen,” answered the lady, 

“ I know you are.” 

186 


THE QUEEN^S WAND. 


isr 

“ And you promise that you will be kind to 
me till I grow up,” said Mopsa, “ and love me, 
and teach me how to reign ? ” 

“ Yes,” repeated the lady ; “ and I will love 
you too, just as if you were a mortal and I 
your mother.” 

“ For I am only ten years old yet,” said 
Mopsa, “ and the throne is too big for me to 
sit upon ; but I am a queen.” And then she 
paused, and said, “ Is it three o’clock ? ” 

As she spoke, the sweet clear bell of the 
castle sounded three times, and then chimes 
began to play : they played such a joyous tune 
that it made everybody sing. The dame sang, 
the crowd of fairies sang, the boy who was 
Jack’s double sang, and Mopsa sang, — only 
Jack was silent, — and this was the song : — 

The prince shall to the chase again, 

The dame has got her face again, 

The king shall have his place again 
Aneath the fairy dome. 

And all the knights shall woo again. 

And all the doves shall coo again, 

And all the dreams come true again. 

And Jack shall go home. 


188 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


“We shall see about that!’’ thought Jack 
to himself. And Mopsa, while she sang those 
last words, burst into tears, which Jack did 
not like to see ; but all the fairies were so very 
glad, so joyous, and so delighted with her for 
having come to be their queen, that after a 
while she dried her eyes, and said to the wrong 
boy,— 

“ Jack, when I pulled the lining out of your 
pocket-book there was a silver fourpence in 
it.” 

“ Yes,” said the real Jack, “ and here it is.” 

“ Is it real money ? ” asked Mopsa. “ Are 
you sure you brought it with you all the way 
from your own country ? ” 

“ Yes,” said Jack, “ quite sure.” 

“ Then, dear Jack,” answered Mopsa, “ will 
you give it to me ? ” 

“I will,” said Jack, “if you will send this 
boy away.” 

“ How can I ? ” answered Mopsa, surprised. 
“ Don’t you know what happened when the 
door closed ? Has nobody told you ? ” 

“ I did not see any one after I got into the 


THE queen’s wand. 


189 


place,” said Jack. “ There was no one to tell 
anything, — not even a fawn, nor the brown 
doe. I have only seen down here these fairy 
people, and this boy, and this lady.” 

“ The lady is the brown doe,” answered 
Mopsa ; “ and this boy and the fairies were 
the fawns.” Jack was so astonished at this 
that he stared at the lady and the boy and the 
fairies with all his might. 

“ The sun came shining in as I stepped in- 
side,” said Mopsa, “ and a long beam fell down 
from the fairy dome across my feet. Do you 
remember what the apple- woman told us, — 
how it was reported that the brown doe and 
her nation had a queen whom they shut up, 
and never let the sun shine on her ? That was 
not a kind or true report, and yet it came from 
something that really happened.” 

“ Yes, I remember,” said Jack ; “ and if the 
sun did shine they were all to be turned into 
deer.” 

I dare not tell you all that story yet,” said 
Mopsa ; “ but. Jack, as the brown doe and all 
the fawns came up to greet me, and passed by 


190 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


turns into the sunbeam, they took their own 
forms, every one of them, because the spell was 
broken. They were to remain in the disguise 
of deer till a queen of alien birth should come 
to them against her will. I am a queen of alien 
birth, and did not I come against my will ? ” 

“ Yes, to be sure,” answered Jack. “We 
thought all the time that we were running 
away.” 

“ If ever you come to Fairyland again,” ob- 
served Mopsa, “you can save yourself the 
trouble of trying to run away from the old 
mother.” 

“ I shall not ‘ come,’ ” answered Jack, “ be- 
cause I shall not go, — not for a long while, at 
least. But the boy, — I want to know why this 
boy turned into another me ? ” 

“ Because he is the heir, of course,” answered 
Mopsa. 

• “ But I don’t see that this is any reason at 
all,” said Jack. 

Mopsa laughed. “ That’s because you don’t 
know how to argue,” she replied. “ Why, the 
thing is as plain as possible.” 


191 


THE queen’s wand. 

“It may be plain to you,” persisted Jack, 
“but it’s no reason.” 

“ No reason ! ” repeated Mopsa, “ no reason ! 
when I like you the best of anything in the 
world, and when I am come here to be queen ? 
Of course, when the spell was broken he took 
exactly your form on that account ; and very 
right too.” 

“ But why ? ” asked Jack. 

Mopsa, however, was like other fairies in 
this respect, — that she knew all about Old 
Mother Fate, but not about causes and reasons. 
She believed, as we do in this world, that 

That that is, is ; 

but the fairies go further than this ; they say : — 

That that is, is ; and when it is, that is the reason that 
it is. 

This sounds like nonsense to us, but it is all 
right to them. 

So Mopsa, thinking she had explained every- 
thing, said again, — 

“ And, dear Jack, will you give the silver 
fourpence to me ? ” 


192 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


Jack took it out ; and she got down from 
the dame’s knee and took it in the palm of her 
hand, laying the other palm upon it. 

It will be very hot,” observed the dame. 

“ But it will not burn me so as really to hurt, 
if I am a real queen,” said Mopsa. 

Presently she began to look as if something 
gave her pain. 

“ Oh, it’s so hot ! ” she said to the other 
Jack ; “ so very hot ! ” 

“ Never mind, sweet Queen,” he answered ; 
“ it will not hurt you long. Remember my 
poor uncle and all his knights.” 

Mopsa still held the little silver coin ; but 
Jack saw that it hurt her, for two bright tears 
fell from her eyes ; and in another moment he 
saw that it was actually melted, for it fell in 
glittering drops from Mopsa’s hand to the 
marble floor, and there it lay as soft as quick- 
silver. 

“ Pick it up,” said Mopsa to the other Jack ; 
and he instantly did so, and laid it in her hand 
again ; and she began gently to roll it back- 
wards and forwards between her palms till she 


THE QUEEN^S WAND. 


193 


had rolled it into a very slender rod, two feet 
long, and not nearly so thick as a pin ; but it 
did not bend, and it shone so brightly that you 
could hardly look at it. 

Then she held it out towards the real Jack, 
and said, “ Give this a name.” 

“ I think it is a ” began the other Jack; 

but the dame suddenly stopped him. ‘‘ Silence, 
sire! Don’t you know that what it is first 
called that it will be ? ” 

Jack hesitated ; he thought if Mopsa was a 
queen the thing ought to be a scepter ; but it 
certainly was not at all like a scepter. 

“ That thing is a wand,” said he. 

“ You are a wand,” said Mopsa, speaking to 
the silver stick, which was glittering now in a 
sunbeam almost as if it were a beam of light 
itself. Then she spoke again to Jack : 

“ Tell me. Jack, what can I do with a 
wand ? ” 

Again the boy-king began to speak, and the 
dame stopped him, and again Jack considered. 
He had heard a great deal in his own country 
about fairy wands, but he could not remember 

13 


194 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


that the fairies had done anything particular 
with them, so he gave what he thought was 
true, but what seemed to him a very stupid 
answer : 

“You can make it point to anything that 
you please.” 

The moment he had said this, shouts of ec- 
stasy filled the hall, and all the fairies clapped 
their hands with such hurrahs of delight that 
he blushed for joy. 

The dame also looked truly glad, and as for 
the other Jack, he actually turned head over 
heels, just as Jack had often done himself on 
his father’s lawn. 

Jack had merely meant that Mopsa could 
point with the wand to anything that she saw ; 
but he was presently told that what he had 
meant was nothing, and that his words were 
everything. “ I can make it point now,” said 
Mopsa, “ and it will point aright to anything I 
please, whether I know where the thing is or 
not.” 

Again the hall was filled with those cries of 
joy, and the sweet, child-like fairies congratu- 


THE queen’s wand. 


195 


lated each other with “ The Queen has got a 
wand, — a wand ! and she can make it point 
wherever she pleases ! ” 

Then Mopsa rose and walked towards the 
beautiful staircase, the dame and all the fairies 
following. Jack was going too, but the other 
Jack held him. 

“ Where is Mopsa going ? and why am I not 
to follow ? ” inquired Jack. 

“ They are going to put on her robes, of 
course,” answered the other Jack. 

“ I am so tired of always hearing you say ^ of 
course,’ ” answered Jack ; “ and I wonder how 
it is that you always seem to know what is 
going to be done without being told. However, 
I suppose you can’t help being odd people.” 

The boy-king did not make a direct answer ; 
he only said, “ I like you very much, though 
you don’t like me.” 

“ Why do you like me ? ” asked Jack. 

So he opened his eyes wide with surprise : 
“ Most boys say Sire to me,” he observed ; “ at 
least they used to do when there were any 
boys here. However, that does not signify. 


196 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


Why, of course I like you, because I am so 
tired of being always a fawn, and you brought 
Mopsa to break the spell. You cannot think 
how disagreeable it is to have no hands, and to 
be all covered with hair. Now look at my 
hands ; I can move them and turn them every- 
where, even over my head if I like. Hoofs are 
good for nothing in comparison ; and we could 
not talk.” 

“ Do tell me about it,” said Jack. “ How 
did you become fawns ? ” 

“ I dare not tell you,” said the boy ; “ and 
listen ! — I hear Mopsa.” 

Jack looked, and certainly Mopsa was com- 
ing, but very strangely, he thought. Mopsa, 
like all other fairies, was afraid to whisper a 
spell with her eyes open; so a handkerchief 
was tied across them, and as she came on she 
felt her way, holding by the banisters with one 
hand, and with the other, between her finger 
and thumb, holding out the silver wand. She 
felt with her foot for the edge of the first stair ; 
and Jack heard her say, “I am much older, — 
ah ! so much older, now I have got my wand. 


THE queen’s wand. 197 

I can feel sorrow too, and their sorrow weighs 
down my heart.” 

Mopsa was dressed superbly in a white satin 
gown, with a long, long train of crimson velvet 
which was glittering with diamonds ; it reached 
almost from one end of the great gallery to the 
other, and had hundreds of fairies to hold it 
and keep it in its place. But in her hair were 
no jewels, only a little crown made of daisies, 
and on her shoulders her robe was fastened 
with the little golden image of a boat. These 
things were to show the land she had come 
from and the vessel she had come in. 

So she came slowly, slowly down stairs blind- 
fold, and muttering to her wand all the time : 

Though the sun shine brightly, 

Wand, wand, guide rightly. 

So she felt her way down to the great hall. 
There the wand turned half round in the hall 
toward the great door, and she and Jack and 
the other Jack came out into the lawn in front 
with all the followers and trainbearers ; only 
the dame remained behind. 

Jack noticed now for the first time that. 


198 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


with the one exception of the boy-king, all 
these fairies were lady-fairies ; he also observed 
that Mopsa, after the manner of fairy queens, 
though she moved slowly and blindfold, was 
beginning to tell a story. This time it did 
not make him feel sleepy. It did not begin at 
the beginning : their stories never do. 

These are the first words he heard, for she 
spoke softly and very low, while he walked at 
her right* hand, and the other Jack on her 
left : 

“And so now I have' no wings. But my 
thoughts can go up (Jovinian and Koxaletta 
could not think). My thoughts are instead of 
wings ; but they have dropped with me now, as 
a lark among the clods of the valley. Wand, 
do, you bend ? Yes, I am following, wand. 

And after that the bird said, ‘ I will come 
when you call me.’ I never have seen her 
moving overhead ; perhaps she is out of sight. 
Flocks of birds hover over the world, and watch 
it high up where the air is thin. There are 
zones, but those in the lowest zone are far out 
of sight. 


THE queen’s wand. 


199 


I have not been up there. I have no wings. 

“Over the highest of the birds is the place 
where angels float and gather the children’s 
souls as they are set free. 

“ And so that woman told me, — (Wand, you 
bend again, and I wdll turn at your bending), 
— that woman told me how it was : for when 
the new king was born, a black fairy with a 
smiling face came and sat within the doorway. 
She had a spindle, and would always spin. She 
wanted to teach them how to spin, but they 
did not like her, and they loved to do nothing 
at all. So they turned her out. 

“ But after her came a brown fairy, with a 
grave face, and she sat on the black fairy’s 
stool and gave them much counsel. They liked 
that still less ; so they got spindles and spun, 
for they said, ‘ She will go now, and we shall 
have the black fairy again.’ When she did 
not go they turned her out also, and after her 
came a white fairy, and sat in the same seat. 
She did nothing at all, and she said nothing at 
all ; but she had a sorrowful face, and she 
looked up. So they were displeased. They 


200 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


turned her out also ; and she went and sat by 
the edge of the lake with her two sisters. 

“ And everything prospered over all the 
land; till, after shearing- time, the shepherds, 
because the king was a child, came to his uncle 
and said, ‘ Sir, what shall we do with the old 
wool, for the new fleeces are in the bales, and 
there is no storehouse to put them in ? ’ So he 
said, ^ Throw them into the lake.’ 

“ And while they threw them in, a great 
flock of finches flew to them, and said, ‘ Give 
us some of the wool that you do not want ; we 
should be glad of it to build our nests with.’ 

“ They answered, ‘ Go and gather for your- 
selves ; there is wool on every thorn.’ 

“ Then the black fairy said, ‘ They shall be 
forgiven this time, because the birds should pick 
wool for themselves.’ 

“ So the finches flew away. 

“ Then the harvest was over, and the reapers 
came and said to the child-king’s uncle, ‘ Sir, 
what shall we do with the new wheat, for the 
old is not half eaten yet, and there is no room in 
the granaries ? ” 


THE queen’s wand. 


201 


“ He said, ‘ Throw that into the lake also.’ 

“While they were throwing it in, there 
came a great flight of the wood fairies, fairies 
of passage from over the sea. They were in 
the form of pigeons, and they alighted and 
prayed them, ‘ O, cousins ! we are faint with 
our long flight ; give us some of that corn which 
you do not want, that we may peck it and be 
refreshed.’ 

“ But they said, ‘ You may rest on our land, 
but our corn is our own. Best awhile, and go 
and get food in your own fields.’ 

“ Then the brown fairy said, ‘ They may be 
forgiven this once, but yet it is a great unkind- 
ness.’ 

“ And as they were going to pour in the last 
sackful, there passed a poor mortal beggar, who 
had strayed in. from the men and women’s 
world, and she said, ‘ Pray give me some of 
that wheat, O fairy people ! for I am hungry. 
I have lost my way, and there is no money to 
be earned here. Give me some of that wheat, 
that I may bake cakes, lest I and my baby 
should starve.’ 


202 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


“And they said, ‘ What is starve ? W e never 
heard that word before, and we cannot wait 
while you explain it to us. 

“ So they poured it all into the lake ; and 
then the white fairy said, ‘ This cannot be for- 
given them ’ ; and she covered her face with 
her hands and wept. Then the black fairy 
rose and drove them all before her, — the prince, 
with his chief shepherd and his reapers, his 
courtiers and his knights ; she drove them into 
the great bed of reeds, and no one has ever 
set eyes on them since. Then the brown fairy 
went into the palace where the king’s aunt sat, 
with all her ladies and her maids about her, 
and with the child-king on her knee. 

“ It was a very gloomy day. 

“ She stood in the middle of the hall, and 
said, ‘ Oh, you cold-hearted and most unkind ! 
my spell is upon you, and the first ray of sun- 
shine shall bring it down. Lose your present 
forms, and be of a more gentle and innocent 
race, till a queen of alien birth shall come to 
reign over you against her will.’ 

“ As she spoke they crept into corners, and 


THE queen’s wand. 203 

covered the dame’s head with a veil. And all 
that day it was dark and gloomy, and nothing 
happened, and all the next day it rained and 
rained ; and they thrust the dame into a dark 
closet, and kept her there for a whole month, 
and still not a ray of sunshine came to do them 
any damage ; but the dame faded and faded in 
the dark, and at last they said, ‘ She must come 
out, or she will die ; and we do not believe the 
sun will ever shine in our country any more.’ 
So they let the poor dame come out ; and lo ! 
as she crept slowly forth under the dome, a 
piercing ray of sunlight darted down upon 
her head, and in an instant they were all 
changed into deer, and the child-king too. 

“ They are gentle now, and kind ; but where 
is the prince ? where are the fairy knights and 
the fairy men ? 

“ Wand ! why do you turn ? ” 

JSTow while Mopsa told her story the wand 
continued to bend, and Mopsa, following, was 
slowly approaching the foot of a great preci- 
pice, which rose sheer up for more than a 
hundred feet. The crowd that followed looked 


204 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


dismayed at this : they thought the wand must 
be wrong ; or even if it was right, they could 
not climb a precipice. 

But still Mopsa walked on blindfold, and the 
wand pointed at the rock till it touched it, and 
she said, “ Who is stopping me ? ” 

They told her, and she called to some of her 
ladies to untie the handkerchief. Then Mopsa 
looked at the rock, and so did the two Jacks. 
There was nothing to be seen but a very tiny 
hole. The boy-king thought it led to a bees’ 
nest, and Jack thought it was a keyhole, for he 
noticed in the rock a slight crack which took 
the shape of an arched door. 

Mopsa looked earnestly at the hole. “It 
may be a keyhole,” she said, “ but there is no 
key.” 


CHAPTER XVI. 

FAILURE. 

We are much bound to them that do succeed ; 

But, in a more pathetic sense, are bound 
To such as fail. They all our loss expound ; 

They comfort us for work that will not speed. 

And life — itself a failure. Ay, his deed. 

Sweetest in story, who the dusk profound 
Of Hades flooded with entrancing sound, 

Music’s own tears, was failure. Doth it read 
Therefore the worse ? Ah, no ! so much to dare, 

He fronts the regnant Darkness on its throne. — 

So much to do ; impetuous even there, 

He pours out love’s disconsolate sweet moan — 

He wins ; but few for that his deed recall : 

Its power is in the look which costs him all. 

At this moment Jack observed that a strange 

woman was standing among them, and that the 

train-bearing fairies fell back, as if they were 

afraid of her. As no one spoke, he did, and 

said, “ Good morning ! 

“ Good afternoon ! ” she answered, correcting 

205 


206 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


him. I am the black fairy. Work is a fine 
thing. Most people in your country can work.” 

“Yes,” said Jack. 

“ There are two spades,” continued the fairy 
woman, “ one for you, and one for your double.” 

Jack took one of the spades, — it was small, 
and was made of silver ; but the other Jack said 
with scorn, — 

“ I shall be a king when I am old enough, 
and must I dig like a clown ? ” 

“ As you please,” said the black fairy, and 
walked away. 

Then they all observed that a brown woman 
was standing there ; and she stepped up and 
whispered in the boy-king’s ear. As he listened 
his sullen face became good-tempered, and at 
last he said, in a gentle tone, “ Jack, I’m quite 
ready to begin if you are.” 

“ But where are we to dig ? ” asked Jack. 

“ There,” said a white fairy, stepping up and 
setting her foot on the grass just under the little 
hole. “ Dig down as deep as you can.” 

So Mopsa and the crowd stood back, and the 
two boys began to dig ; and greatly they en- 


FAILURE. 


207 


joyed it, for people can dig so fast in Fairy- 
land. 

Y ery soon the hole was so deep that they had 
to jump into it, because they could not reach 
the bottom with their spades. “ This is very 
jolly indeed,’’ said Jack, when they had dug so 
much deeper that they could only see out of the 
hole by standing on tiptoe. 

“ Go on,” said the white fairy ; so they dug 
till they came to a flat stone, and then she said, 
“IS'ow you can stamp. Stamp on the stone, 
and don’t be afraid.” So the two Jacks began 
to stamp, and in such a little time that she had 
only half turned her head round, the flat stone 
gave way, for there was a hollow underneath 
it, and down went the boys, and utterly disap- 
peared. 

Then, while Mopsa and the crowd silently 
looked on, the white fairy lightly pushed the 
clods of earth towards the hole with the side of 
her foot, and in a very few minutes the hole 
was filled in, and that so completely and so 
neatly, that when she had spread the turf on it, 
and given it a pat with her foot, you could not 


208 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


have told where it had been. Mopsa said not 
a word, for no fairy ever interferes with a 
stronger fairy; but she looked on earnestly, 
and when the white stranger smiled she was 
satisfied. 

Then the white stranger walked away, and 
Mopsa and the fairies sat down on a bank under 
some splendid cedar-trees. The beautiful castle 
looked fairer than ever in the afternoon sun- 
shine ; a lovely waterfall tumbled with a tink- 
ling noise near at hand, and the bank was 
covered with beautiful wild flowers. 

They sat for a long while, and no one spoke : 
what they were thinking of is not known, but 
sweet Mopsa often sighed. 

At last a noise, — a very, very slight noise, as 
of the footsteps of people running, — was heard 
inside the rock, and then a little quivering was 
seen in the wand. It quivered more and more 
as the sound increased. At last that which had 
looked like a door began to shake as if some 
one was pushing it from within. Then a noise 
was distinctly heard as of a key turning in the 
hole, and out burst the two Jacks, shouting for 


FAILURE. 


209 


joy, and a whole troop of knights and squires 
and serving-men came rushing wildly forth 
behind them. 

Oh, the joy of that meeting ! who shall des- 
cribe it ? Fairies by dozens came up to kiss the 
boy-king’s hand, and Jack shook hands with 
every one that could reach him. Then Mopsa 
proceeded to the castle between the two Jacks, 
and the king’s aunt came out to meet them, and 
welcomed her husband with tears of joy ; for 
these fairies could laugh and cry when they 
pleased, and they naturally considered this a 
great proof of superiority. 

After this a splendid feast was served under 
the great dome. The other fairy feasts that 
Jack had seen were nothing to it. The prince 
and his dame sat at one board, but Mopsa sat 
at the head of the great table, with the two 
Jacks, one on each side of her. 

Mopsa was not happy, Jack was sure of that, 
for she often sighed ; and he thought this 
strange. But he did not ask her any questions, 
and he, with the boy-king, related their adven- 
tures to her ; how, when the stone gave way, 
14 


210 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


they tumbled in and rolled down a sloping 
bank till they found themselves at the entrance 
of a beautiful cave, which was all lighted up 
with torches, and glittering with stars and 
crystals of all the colors in the world. There 
was a table spread with what looked like a 
splendid luncheon in this great cave, and chairs 
were set round, but Jack and the boy-king felt 
no inclination to eat anything, though they 
were hungry, for a whole nation of ants were 
creeping up the honey-pots. There were snails 
walking about over the table-cloth, and toads 
peeping out of some of the dishes. 

So they turned away, and looking for some 
other door to lead them farther in, they at last 
found a very small one, — so small that only one 
of them could pass through at a time. 

They did not tell Mopsa all that had occurred 
on this occasion. It was thus : 

The boy-king said, “ I shall go in first, of 
course, because of my rank.” 

“Yery well,” said Jack, “I don’t mind. I 
shall say to myself that you’ve gone in first to 
find the way for me, because you’re my double. 


FAILURE. 


211 


Besides, now I think of it, our Queen always 
goes last in a procession ; so it’s grand to go 
last. Pass in. Jack.” 

answered the other Jack; “now you 
have said that I will not. You may go first.” 

So they began to quarrel and argue about 
this, and it is impossible to say how long they 
would have gone on if they had not begun to 
hear a terrible and mournful sort of moaning 
and groaning, which frightened them both and 
instantly made them friends. They took tight 
hold of one another’s hand, and again there 
came by a loud sighing, and a noise of all sorts 
of lamentation, and it seemed to reach them 
through the little door. 

Each of the boys would now have been very 
glad to go back, but neither liked to speak. At 
last Jack thought anything would be less ter- 
rible than listening to those dismal moans, so he 
suddenly dashed through the door, and the other 
Jack followed. 

There w’as nothing terrible to be seen. They 
found themselves in a place like an immensely 
long stable ; but it was nearly dark, and when 


212 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


their eyes got used to the dimness, they saw that 
it was strewed with quantities of fresh hay, from 
which curious things like sticks stuck up in all 
directions. What were they ? 

“ They are dry branches of trees,” said the 
boy-king. 

“ They are table-legs turned upside down,” 
said Jack : but then the other Jack suddenly’' 
perceived the real nature of the thing, and he 
shouted out, “ [N’o ; they are antlers ! ” 

The moment he said this the moaning ceased, 
hundreds of beautiful antlered heads were lifted 
up, and the two boys stood before a splendid 
herd of stags ; but they had had hardly time to 
be sure of this when the beautiful multitude rose 
and fled away into the darkness, leaving the two 
boys to follow as well as they could. 

They were sure they ought to run after the 
herd, and they ran and ran, but they soon lost 
sight of it, though they heard far on in front 
what Seemed at first like a pattering of deer’s 
feet, but the sound changed from time to time. 
It became heavier and louder, and then the 
clattering ceased, and it was evidently the 


FAILURE. 


213 


tramping of a great crowd of men. At last 
they heard words, very glad and thankful 
words ; people were crying to one another to 
make haste, lest the spell should come upon 
them again. Then the two Jacks, still run- 
ning, came into a grand hall, which was quite 
full of knights and all sorts of fairy men, and 
there was the boy-king’s uncle, but he looked 
very pale. “ Unlock the door ! ” they cried. 
“We shall not be safe till we see our new 
Queen. Unlock the door ; we see light com- 
ing through the keyhole.” 

The two Jacks came on to the front, and 
felt and shook the door. At last the boy-king 
saw a little golden key glittering on the floor, 
just where the one narrow sunbeam fell that 
came through the keyhole ; so he snatched it 
up. It fitted, and out they all came, as you 
have been told. 

When they had done relating their adven- 
tures, the new Queen’s health was drunk. 
And then they drank the health of the boy- 
king, who stood up to return thanks, and, as 
is the fashion there, he sang a song. Jack 


214 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


thought it the most ridiculous song he had 
ever heard ; but as everybody else looked ex- 
tremely grave, he tried to be grave too. It 
was about Cock-Tlobin and Jenny Wren, how 
they made a wedding feast, and how the wren 
said she should wear her brown gown, and 
the old dog brought a bone to the feast. 

“ He had brought them,” he said, “ some meat on a 
bone : 

They were welcome to pick it or leave it alone.” 

The fairies were very attentive to this song ; 
they seemed, if one may judge by their looks, 
to think it was rather a serious one. Then 
they drank Jack’s health, and afterwards 
looked at him as if they expected him to sing 
too; but as he did not begin, he presently 
heard them whispering, and one asking another, 
“ Do you think he knows manners ? ” 

So he thought he had better try what he 
could do, and he stood up and sang a song 
that he had often heard his nurse sing in the 
nursery at home. 

One morning, oh ! so early, my beloved, my beloved. 
All the birds were singing blithely, as if never they 
would cease ; 


FAILURE. 216 

’Twas a thrush sang in my garden, “ Hear the story, 
hear the story ! ” 

And the lark sang, “ Give us glory ! ” 

And the dove said, “ Give us peace ! ” 

Then I listened, oh ! so early, my beloved, my beloved, 
To that murmur from the woodland of the dove, my 
dear, the dove ; 

When the nightingale came after, “Give us fame to 
sweeten duty ! ” 

When the wren sang, “ Give us beauty 1 ” 

She made answer, “ Give us love I ” 

Sweet is spring, and sweet the morning, my beloved, 
my beloved ; 

Now for us doth spring, doth morning, wait upon the 
year’s increase, 

And my prayer goes up, “Oh, give us, crowned in 
youth with marriage glory. 

Give for all our life’s clear story. 

Give us love, and give us peace ! ” 

A very good song too,” said the dame, at 

the other end of the table ; “ only you made 

a mistake in the first verse. "What the dove 

really said was, no doubt, ‘ Give us peas.’ All 

kinds of doves and pigeons are very fond of 

peas.” 

It isn’t peas, though,” said Jack. How- 
ever, the court historian was sent for to write 
down the song, and he came with a quill pen, and 
wrote it down as the dame said it ought to be. 


216 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


Now all this time Mopsa sat between the 
two Jacks, and she looked very mournful, — 
she hardly said a word. 

When the feast was over, and everything had 
vanished, the musicians came in, for there was 
to be dancing ; but while they were striking 
up the white fairy stepped in, and, coming up, 
whispered something in Jack’s ear ; but he 
could not hear what she said, so she repeated 
it more slowly, and still he could neither hear 
nor understand it. 

Mopsa did not seem to like the white fairy ; 
she leaned her face on her hand and sighed ; 
but when she found that Jack could not hear 
the message, she said, “ That is well. Cannot 
you let things alone for this one day ? ” The 
fairy then spoke to Mopsa, but she would not 
listen ; she made a gesture of dislike and moved 
away. So then this strange fairy turned and 
went out again, but on the door-step she looked 
round, and beckoned to Jack to come to her. 
So he did ; and then, as they two stood together 
outside, she made him understand what she 
had said. It was this : 


FAILURE. 217 

“ Her name was Jenny, her name was 
Jenny.” 

When Jack understood what she said he felt 
so sorrowful ; he wondered why she had told 
him, and he longed to stay in that great place 
with Queen Mopsa, — his own little Mopsa, 
whom he had carried in his pocket, and taken 
care of, and loved. 

He walked up and down, up and down, out- 
side, and his heart swelled and his eyes filled 
with tears. The bells had said he was to go 
home, and the fairy had told him how to go. 
Mopsa did not need him, she had so many 
people to take care of her ; and then there was 
that boy, so exactly like himself that she would 
not miss him. Oh, how sorrowful it all was ! 
Had he really come up the fairy river, and seen 
those strange countries, and run away with 
Mopsa over those dangerous mountains, only 
to bring her to the very place she wished to 
fly from, and there to leave her, knowing that 
she wanted him no more, and that she was 
quite content? 

Ho; Jack felt that he could not do that. 


218 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


“ I will stay,” he said ; “ they cannot make me 
leave her. That would be too unkind.” 

As he spoke, he drew near to the great 
yawning door, and looked in. The fairy folk 
were singing inside ; he could hear their pretty 
chirping voices, and see their beautiful faces, 
but he could not bear it, and he turned away. 

The sun began to get low, and all the west 
was dyed with crimson. Jack dried his eyes, 
and, not liking to go in, took one turn 
more. 

“ I will go in,” he said ; “ there is nothing 
to prevent me.” He set his foot on the step 
of the door, and while he hesitated Mopsa 
came out to meet him. 

“ Jack,” she said, in a sweet, mournful tone 
of voice. But he could not make any answer ; 
he only looked at her earnestly, because her 
lovely eyes were not looking at him, but far 
away towards the west. 

“ He lives there,” she said, as if speaking to 
herself. ‘‘He will play there again, in his 
father’s garden.” 

Then she brought her eyes down slowly from 


FAILURE. 219 

the rose-flush in the cloud, and looked at him 
and said, “ Jack.” 

“Yes,” said Jack ; “I am here. What is it 
that you wish to say ? ” 

She answered, “ I am come to give you back 
your kiss.” 

So she stooped forward as she stood on the 
step and kissed him, and her tears fell on his 
cheek. 

“ Farewell ! ” she said, and she turned and 
went up the steps and into the great hall ; and 
while Jack gazed at her as she entered, and 
would fain have followed, but could not stir, 
the great doors closed together again, and he 
was left outside. 

Then he knew, without having been told, 
that he should never enter them any more. 
He stood gazing at the castle ; but it was still, 
— no more fairy music sounded. 

How beautiful it looked in the evening sun- 
shine, and how Jack cried ! 

Suddenly he perceived that reeds were grow- 
ing up between him and the great doors : the 
grass, which had all day grown about the 


220 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


steps, was getting taller ; it had long spear- 
like leaves, it pushed up long pipes of green 
stem, and they whistled. 

They were up to his ankles, they were pres- 
ently up to his waist ; soon they were as high 
as his head. He drew back that he might see 
over them ; they sprang up faster as he retired 
and again he went back. It seemed to him 
that the castle also receded ; there was a long 
reach of these great reeds between it and him, 
and now they were growing behind also, and 
on all sides of him. He kept moving back and 
back: it was of no use, they sprang up and 
grew yet more tall, till very shortly the last 
glimpse of the fairy castle was hidden from his 
sorrowful eyes. 

The sun was just touching the tops of the 
purple mountains when Jack lost sight of 
Mopsa’s home ; but he remembered how he had 
penetrated the bed of reeds in the morning, 
and he hoped to have the same good fortune 
again. So on and on he walked, pressing his 
way among them as well as he could, till the 
sun went down behind the mountains, and the 


FAILURE. 


221 


rosy sky turned gold color, and the gold began 
to burn itself away, and then all on a sudden 
he came to the edge of the reed-bed, and 
walked out upon a rising ground. 

Jack ran up it, looking for the castle. He 
could not see it, so he climbed a far higher 
hill ; still he could not see it. At last, after a 
toilsome ascent to the very top of the green 
mountain, he saw the castle lying so far, so 
very far off, that its peaks and its battlements 
were on the edge of the horizon, and the eve- 
ning mist rose while he was gazing, so that 
all its outlines were lost, and very soon they 
seemed to mingle with the shapes of the hill 
and the forest, till they had utterly vanished 
away. 

Then he threw himself down on the short 
grass. The words of the white fairy sounded 
in his ears, “Her name was Jenny”; and he 
burst into tears again, and decided to go home. 

He looked up into the rosy sky, and held out 
his arms, and called, “ Jenny ! O Jenny ! come.” 

In a minute or two he saw a little black 
mark overhead, a small speck, and it grew 


222 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


larger, and larger, and larger still, as it fell 
headlong down like a stone. In another in- 
stant he saw a red light and a green light, 
then he heard the winnowing noise of the 
bird’s great wings, and she alighted at his feet, 
and said, “ Here I am.” 

“I wish to go home,” said Jack, hanging 
down his head and speaking in a low voice, for 
his heart was heavy because of his failure. 

“That is well,” answered the bird. She 
took Jack on her back, and in three minutes 
they were floating among the clouds. 

As Jack’s feet were lifted up from Fairyland 
he felt a little consoled. He began to have a 
curious feeling, as if this had all happened a 
good while ago, and then half the sorrow he 
had felt faded into wonder, and the feeling 
still grew upon him that these things had 
passed some great while since, so that he 
repeated to himself, “ It was a long time ago.” 

Then he fell asleep, and did not dream at all, 
nor know anything more till the bird woke him. 

“ Wake up now. Jack,” she said ; “ we are at 
home.” 


FAILURE. 


223 


“ So soon ! ” said Jack, rubbing his eyes. 
‘‘But it is evening; I thought it would be 
morning.” 

“ Fairy time is always six hours in advance 
of your time,” said the bird. “I see glow- 
worms down in the hedge, and the moon is 
just rising.” 

They were falling so fast that Jack dared 
not look; but he saw the church, and the 
wood, and his father’s house, which seemed to 
be starting up to meet him. In two seconds 
more the bird alighted, and he stepped down 
from her back into the deep grass of his 
father’s meadow. 

“ Good-by ! ” she said ; “ make haste and run 
in, for the dews are falling ; ” and before he 
could ask her one question, or even thank her, 
she made a wide sweep over the grass, beat 
her magnificent wings, and soared away. 

It was all very extraordinary, and Jack felt 
shy and ashamed ; but he knew he must go 
home, so he opened the little gate that led into 
the garden, and stole through the shrubberj^^, 
hoping that his footsteps would not be heard. 


224 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


Then he came out on the lawn, where the 
flower-beds were, and he observed that the 
drawing-room window was open, so he came 
softly towards it and peeped in. 

His father and mother were sitting there. 
Jack was delighted to see them, but he did not 
say a word, and he wondered whether they 
would be surprised at his having stayed away 
so long. The bird had said that they would 
not. 

He drew a little nearer. His mother sat 
with her back to the open window, but a candle 
was burning, and she was reading aloud. Jack 
listened as she read, and knew that this was 
not in the least like anything that he had seen 
in Fairyland, nor the reading like anything that 
he had heard, and he began to forget the boy- 
king, and the apple- woman, and even his little 
Mopsa, more and more. 

At last his father noticed him. He did not 
look at all surprised, but just beckoned to him 
with his finger to come in. So Jack did, and 
got upon his father’s knee, where he curled 
himself up comfortably, laid his head on his 


FAILURE. 


225 


father’s waistcoat, and wondered what he would 
think if he should he told about the fairies 
in somebody else’s waistcoat pocket. He 
thought, besides, what a great thing a man 
was ; he had never seen anything so large in 
Fairyland, nor so important ; so, on the whole, 
he was glad he had come hack, and felt very 
comfortable. Then his mother, turning over 
the leaf, lifted up her eyes and looked at Jack, 
but not as if she was in the least surprised, or 
more glad to see him than usual; but she 
smoothed the leaf with her hand, and began 
again to read, and this time it was about the 
Shepherd Lady : — 

I. 

Who pipes upon the long green hilly 
Where meadoiv grass is deep ? 

The white lamb bleats but followeth on — 
Follow the clean white sheep. 

The dear ivhite lady in yon high tower y 
She hearkeneth in her sleep. 

All in long grass the piper standSy 
Ooodly and grave is he ; 

Outside the toivery at dawn of dayy 
The notes of his pipe ring free. 

A thought from his heart doth reach to hers : 

“ Come downy O lady ! to me.” 


15 


226 


MOPSA THE FAIRY. 


She lifts her head, she dons her gown : 

Ah I the lady is fair ; 

She ties the girdle on her waist. 

And binds her flaxen hair, 

And down she stealeth, down and doivn, 

Down the turret stair. 

Behold him ! With the flock he wons 
Along yon grassy lea. 

“ My shepherd lord, my shepherd love. 

What wilt thou, then, loith me 9 

My heart is gone out of my breast. 

And followeth on to thee.^' 

II. 

“ The white lambs feed in tender grass : 

With them and thee to bide. 

How good it ivere,’’^ she saith at noon ; 

“ Albeit the meads are unde. 

Oh ! well is me,"’ she saith when day 
Draivs on to eventide. 

Hark I^hark ! the shepherd’s voice. Oh, sweet f 
Her tears drop down like rain. 

“ Take now this crook, my chosen, my fere. 
And tend the flock full fain ; 

Feed them, O lady, and lose not one. 

Till I shall come again.’^ 

Right soft her speech : My will is thine. 
And my reward thy grace ! ” 

Gone are his footsteps over the hill, 
Withdrawn his goodly face; 

The mournful dusk begins to gather. 

The daylight wans apac^. 


FAILURE. 


227 


III. 

On sunny slopes, ah ! long the lady 
Feedeth her flock at noon ; 

She leads them do 2 vn to drink at eve 
Where the small rivulets croon. 

All night her locks are wet mith dew. 
Her eyes outwatch the moon. 

Over the hills her voice is heard, 

She sings when light doth wane : 

“ My longing heart is full of love. 

When shall my loss he gain 9 
My shepherd lord, I see him not. 

But he will come again.” 


When she had finished, Jack lifted his face 
and said, Mamina ! ” Then she came to him 
and kissed him, and his father said, “ I think 
it must be time this man of ours was in bed.” 

So he looked earnestly at them both, and as 
they still asked him no questions, he kissed and 
wished them good night ; and his mother said 
there were some strawberries on the sideboard 
in the dining-room, and he might have them 
for his supper. 

So he ran out into the hall, and was delighted 
to find all the house just as usual, and after he 


228 MOPSA THE FAIRY. 

had looked about him he went into his own 
room, and said his prayers. Then he got into 
his little white bed, and comfortably fell 
asleep. 


That’s all. 





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BookKellcM & StationerH, 
WaHhinjrton, D. C. 











































































